I am a musician, composer, and humanist in the process of completing a PhD in music composition at Duke University. My musical work is oriented primarily toward jazz, the Western classical tradition, and music for devised theatre, while as a humanist I am primarily interested in American politics, culture, and music in an international context.
At Duke, I have served as an instructor of record for first-year writing courses, as well as a lab leader and TA in the Department of Music for classes covering tonal analysis, aural skills, jazz, popular music, and electronic music. In my capacity as a composer and performer, I have worked collaboratively with undergraduate students in theatre productions at the University of North Carolina, Amherst College, the University of Maryland, and Limestone University. Since 2006, I have also taught private lessons in performance (primarily double bass), composition, and arranging. [A1,A2,A3,A4]
The theme of both first-year writing courses I’ve taught has been the Iraq War, which I believe offers students a unique opportunity to critically engage — as writers, thinkers, and citizens — with events in their own time. It also allows me to draw on my own undergraduate work in English, rhetoric, and political theory. [V4]
A guiding principle across the board has been the reciprocal relationship between music and the liberal arts. My basic goal as a teacher is to train effective interpreters — and in turn, communicators — of ideas. Whether these ideas are verbal or musical in nature, my approach to teaching emphasizes the integration of creativity and critical thinking, with my training in music composition frequently serving as a model. [A4, V1, K1,K2]
In designing DEPICT (documents, events, people, institutions, concepts, things), an analytical exercise for first-year writing students modeled on the use of parameterization in composition, I asked the students to sort the often diffuse information presented in a given text — for instance, a piece of investigative journalism — into these six categories and then draw their own conclusions from the resulting diagram. Critical interpretation soon gave way to a creative flurry of new ideas, questions, and potential paper topics. As the students experimented with different permutations of the information in front of them, it was clear they felt empowered to begin making sense of it on their own terms. Said one in an end-of-semester evaluation, the course “truly forces you to think for yourself.” [A1,A2,A3,A4, K1, K2]
Exercises like these are also an example of my desire to present the writing process to my students as an experience that extends beyond the act of committing words to the page to include reading, research, reflecting privately, and (in this case) discussion. I do this out of a recognition that different students feel more or less comfortable in each of these modes, and that learning how to move between them more confidently will be an essential academic skill regardless of discipline. [V1,V2,V4, K1, K2]
Similarly, as a lab leader in Theory and Practice of Tonal Music II, I drew on as wide an array of music as I felt would be helpful in teaching harmonic and melodic dictation, sight-singing, ear-training, realizing figured bass at the keyboard, and other applied skills connected to the content of the instructor’s lecture. Students experiencing difficulty understanding 18th- and 19th-century Western-classical harmonic practice in traditional terms were often relieved to discover that certain concepts could also be explained using jazz and vernacular music, which, in addition to helping them develop a more holistic understanding of tonal music, had the added benefit of demonstrating chromaticism and diatonic modes in such a way as to introduce post-tonal musical ideas associated with the 20th century, thereby preparing them for the next stage of music theory. In parallel with the instructor’s short composition assignments asking the students to show a command of sonata form and theme and variations, I asked them to write short pieces that made their knowledge of other types of music relevant while also giving them an opportunity to apply their knowledge of Western-classical practice in a different context. It was perhaps because of this eclectic ethos that one student wrote in an evaluation, “Slay, Ethan! Lab was a ton of fun.” [V1,V2,V4, K1,K2]
A desire to integrate composition, performance, music history, and subjects related to America’s role in the world informed an undergraduate course I designed and hope to teach. The class explores jazz as a simultaneously American and international phenomenon, looking specifically at its reception and adaptation in Cuba, Brazil, France, various regions of Africa, and Japan, and examining cultural, political, technological, and aesthetic context in the case of each. The format would include reading and writing assignments, guest lectures, and the opportunity for students to perform in and compose for ensembles. [A1, V1, V4,]
The more I have embraced the dual identity of musical artist and humanist, the more I have been able to envision making pedagogical strides through continued practical integration, and, looking further ahead, through research on theoretical dialogue between music composition and writing composition.