Georgia Cowart
On Friday, November 22, the European Studies program cosponsored Georgia Cowart with the School of Music. Georgia Cowart is a professor of music history at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where she specializes in French Baroque music and the art and culture of early modern France.
Her work has been recognized and supported by numerous awards, grants and fellowships including the National Endowment for the Humanities and The American Council of Learned Societies. From 2007-09, she served as Sylvan C. and Pamela Coleman Memorial Fund Fellow in Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and as the guest curator of the special exhibition on Watteau, Music & Theater (2009). In 2012 she was the Marta Sutton Weeks Senior Fellow, at the Stanford Humanities Center. She has served as President of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music (2006-09) and recognized for her outstanding scholarly achievements with an Honorary lifetime. She has also held numerous positions in the American Musicological Society including: member of the Editorial Board of the Journal, Director-at-Large, Vice President and she is just finishing her 4-year term as President.
At Case Western, Georgia has served as chair of the Music Department, Coordinator of Graduate Studies in Musicology, and Interim Chair of the Department of English. She has received a number of teaching awards, including the SAGES Excellence in Writing Instruction and the Jessica Melton Perry Award for Disciplinary and Professional Writing Instruction.
She is the author of numerous articles and books including The Origins of Modern Musical Criticism: Quarrels over French and Italian Music, 1600-1750, and The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle. Her current book, "Watteau and the Musical Stage: Art, Satire & Libertinage," is forthcoming next year with Chicago U press.
This glittering and illustrious career started right here at USC in 1981 where Georgia initially held the position of Assistant Professor of Music History, Theory, Piano, and Piano Pedagogy. In her presentation, Cowart highlighted Opera Ballets, Louis XIV, and Watteau Art. Cowart’s books, The Triumph of Treasure and The Origins of Modern Musical Criticism, are available at the UofSC Music Library.