Blair professors Melanie Lowe and Douglas Shadle have been honored with editor roles for two leading music research journals. Lowe has been named editor-in-chief of The Journal of Music History Pedagogy and Shadle has been appointed editor-in-chief of The Journal of Musicological Research.
Serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Music History Pedagogy since 2014, Lowe has written two previous articles that appeared in the publication. The first issue under her editorship will be out in May, a special six-article edition on global music history, along with two additional pieces on related topics.
“It’s an exciting moment to take the helm at the JMHP, as we are now one of the American Musicological Society’s three journals,” Lowe said. “This gives us direct editorial support from the managing editor for AMS publications and access to a more finely tuned workflow platform. Our newly designed website will launch with the publication of our Fall 2024 issue, slated for publication in November.”
The Journal of Music History Pedagogy is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal dedicated to the publication of original articles and reviews related to teaching music history of all levels. The publication’s name will be revised to the Journal of Musicology Pedagogy in its Fall 2024 issue to more accurately reflect the diversity of published content and align with the changing nature of the field of musicology.
“It’s unusual for the same small department to have two journal editors,” said Shadle. “These positions crystallize the commitment of Blair and Vanderbilt to the integration of innovative teaching and cutting-edge research.”
The Journal of Musicological Research publishes original articles on all aspects of the discipline of music: historical musicology, style and repertory studies, music theory, ethnomusicology, music education, organology, and interdisciplinary studies. Shadle’s first editorial contribution is a double issue on organology, or the study of musical instruments, with pieces on topics ranging from the player piano to the iconic Gibson Les Paul guitar.
Melanie Lowe is associate professor of musicology and Area Coordinator for Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Blair School of Music. She is the recipient of many teaching awards, among them the Reverend James Lawson Lectureship (Vanderbilt University, 2008), the Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (Vanderbilt University, 2001), and the Princeton Graduate Alumni Excellence in Teaching Award (Princeton University, 1993). Lowe is the author of Pleasure and Meaning in the Classical Symphony (Indiana University Press, 2007) as well as articles on other 18th-century topics, music in American media, classical recording, and teen pop culture.
Douglas Shadle, associate professor of musicology, is an award-winning historian of American orchestras and orchestral music, and a leading expert on fellow Little Rock native Florence Price. He is currently co-authoring, with Samantha Ege, a biography of Price for the Oxford University Press Master Musicians Series. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.M. in viola performance, summa cum laude, from the University of Houston. Shadle joined the Blair School musicology faculty in 2014.
The Blair Musicology and Ethnomusicology program seeks to produce world-class scholarship in historical musicology and ethnomusicology, often in collaboration with Blair School students and the greater Vanderbilt community. The department serves as an intellectual partner and base of support for creative endeavors across the Vanderbilt campus, in the Nashville metropolitan area, throughout the United States, and around the world.