UK Ethnomusicologist Donna Kwon Selected for ACLS Fellowship

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 17 , 2015) — University of Kentucky Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology Donna Kwon has been selected as a recipient of a 2014-2015 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship. Kwon's research is titled "Stepping in the Madang: Embodying Space and Place in Korean Drumming and Dance."

"Stepping in the Madang" addresses the spatialization of culture in Korean drumming and dance, centering on the concept of the “madang,” a cultural space that was revived in opposition to the Western stage in South Korea. While the madang can best be visualized as a village courtyard, it can also refer temporally to an occasion in time or socially to a sense of embodied communal participation. The thesis of this research contends that the participatory way of being that is cultivated in the madang counteracts the fossilization of tradition by bringing folk practices more fully into the embodied present, even if in an idealized fashion.

Kwon earned bachelor's degrees in piano performance and women's studies from Oberlin College and Conservatory, a master's degree in music and ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and a doctoral degree in musicology and ethnomusicology from the University of California, Berkeley. She has served as an elected member of the Society for Ethnomusicology Council and is president of the Association for Korean Music Research.

Before coming to UK School of Music in 2008, Kwon taught at Lawrence University and Grinnell College and served as the William Randolph Hearst Fellow at Rhodes College, offering courses on Asian music, global and American popular music, world music, Korean percussion and musical places, spaces and scenes. She is the recipient of a Fulbright IIE fellowship, two grants from the Korea Foundation, the Distinguished Master's Thesis Award, and the Marnie Dilling Prize. Kwon presents papers regularly at the Society for Ethnomusicology conference on her research interest which include Korean music, East Asian and Asian American popular and creative music, issues of music and embodiment, gender and the body, space and place, music scenes and the workings of cultural politics. She is also the author of the book "Music in Korea: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture" that was published as part of the Global Music Series of Oxford University Press (2011).

Kwon was happily surprised with the ACLS Fellowship. "My first reaction was just utter disbelief. In fact, I was so convinced that I would be passed over that I completely missed the 'congratulations' in the subject line when opening the initial email from the ACLS Director of Fellowship Programs, Dr. Matthew Goldfeder. I am beyond ecstatic to be a recipient of this support in order to bring this research to fruition and really bring the book project to life. Beyond this, it is incredibly gratifying to know that my research spoke to specialists and non-specialists enough to be selected from the pool of applicants this year. As one of the few ethnomusicologists in the state of Kentucky, it’s easy to feel isolated and lose a sense of connection and perspective from others in the field so this award means that much more to me."

The ACLS, a private, nonprofit federation of 72 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. This year ACLS made a total of 70 awards to faculty of all ranks and independent scholars too support research in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.

"Fellows were chosen for their potential to create new knowledge resulting from investigations and reflections on cultures, texts and artifacts from across the globe and human history," Goldfeder said. "ACLS programs employs a rigorous multi-stage peer review process to ensure that humanities scholars themselves select those few fellows who exemplify the very best in their fields. The 70 fellows this year represent more than 50 colleges and universities and an array of human disciplines, including linguistics, religious studies, architectural history and geography."

ACLS Fellowships allow the scholars to spend six to 12 months on full-time researching and writing. The program is funded by the ACLS endowment, which has received contributions from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment of Humanities, the council's college and university associates, past fellows and friends of ACLS.

The UK School of Music at the UK College of Fine Arts garnered national recognition for high-caliber education in opera, choral and instrumental music performance, as well as music education, composition, theory and music history.

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu