Judith Becker

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Judith Becker

Judith Becker, March 2008
Born (1932-09-03)September 3, 1932
Bay City, Michigan
Nationality United States
Fields Ethnomusicology, Southeast Asian studies, Anthropology
Institutions University of Michigan
Alma mater University of Michigan (Ph.D., 1972)
Thesis Traditional Music in Modern Java (1972)
Doctoral advisor William P. Malm
Doctoral students Jocelyne Guilbault, R. Anderson Sutton, Marc Benamou, Susan Walton, Mohd Anis Md Nor, Felicidad Prudente
Known for Study of music in Indonesia, brain science, music and emotion, music and trance, musical grammars.
Notable awards Charles Seeger lecturer (2003), Alan P. Merriam Prize (2005), Honorary Member of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2011)
Website
Faculty profile

Judith O. Becker (b. September 3, 1932) is an ethnomusicologist and Southeast Asianist noted for her study of musics in South and Southeast Asia, including Javanese gamelan, Burmese harp, music and trance, music and emotion, neuroscience, and a theoretical rapprochement of empirical and qualitative methods. Becker is professor emeritus of music at the University of Michigan.[1] From 2000 until her retirement in 2008, Becker was the Glenn McGeoch Collegiate Professor of Musicology at University of Michigan.[2]

Becker completed a bachelor's degree in music at the University of Michigan before completing the doctorate there in 1972.[1] Her early work was based on in-depth ethnography and on-site research of the Burmese harp (sang gauk) and Javanese gamelan; however, her later work challenged in-depth ethnography as the dominant research method in ethnomusicology, specifically by investigating the relationship between esoteric texts of Tantrism and sufism with musical thinking and more recently through explorations of the intersections of neuroscience, music, and emotion.[3] These studies, which were informed by ethnography as well as other research methods, were the basis for Becker's books Gamelan Stories (1993) and Deep Listeners (2004).

She has been a distinguished lecturer in ethnomusicology at conferences and symposia, and in 2003 was selected as the Charles Seeger lecturer for which she delivered an address titled "Trancers and Deep Listeners."[4] Becker received the Alan Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2005 for her book, Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing.[5] She was named an Honorary Member of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2010.[6]

Select bibliography

  • "Time and Tune in Java", in The Imagination of Reality: Essays in Southeast Asian Coherence Systems, ed. Alton L. Becker and A.A. Yengoyan (Norwood, New Jersey: 1979), pp. 197–210.
  • Becker, Judith; Becker, Alton L. (1979). "The Grammar of a Musical Genre, Srepegan". Journal of Music Theory 23. pp. 1–43. 
  • Judith Becker (1980). Traditional Music in Modern Java. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press.  (based on dissertation, 1972)
  • Becker, Judith; Becker, Alton L. (1981), "A Musical Icon: Power and Meaning in Javanese Gamelan Music", in W. Steiner, The Sign in Music and Literature, Austin, pp. 169–183 
  • Judith Becker (1988). "Earth, Fire, sakti and the Javanese gamelan". Ethnomusicology 32. pp. 385–391. 
  • Judith Becker (1993). Gamelan Stories: Tantrism, Islam and Aesthetics in Central Java. Tempe, AZ. 
  • Becker, Judith (1993). "Exploring the Habitus of Listening". In Juslin, Patrick N. Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications. Oxford Univ Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230143.003.0006. ISBN 9780199230143. 
  • Becker, Judith (2001), "Anthropological perspectives on music and emotion", in Juslin, P.; Sloboda, J, Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 135–160 
  • Judith Becker (2004). Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing. Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. 
  • Judith Becker (2009). "Ethnomusicology and Empiricism in the Twenty-First Century". Ethnomusicology 53. 

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Terry E. Miller, "Becker, Judith O." in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001).
  2. ↑ http://www.ethnomusicology.org/?HS_Becker2 (accessed August 2013)
  3. ↑ Interview with Judith Becker by R. Anderson Sutton, Newsletter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, vol. 47, no. 2 (March 2013), http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.ethnomusicology.org/resource/resmgr/newsletters/semnl47-2.pdf (accessed January 2014).
  4. ↑ http://www.ethnomusicology.org/?History_Seeger (accessed January 2014)
  5. ↑ http://www.ethnomusicology.org/?Prizes_Merriam (accessed 11 August 2013)
  6. ↑ http://www.ethnomusicology.org/?page=HonoraryMembers (accessed January 2014)
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