Lyn Burkett

Biography

Dr. Lyn Ellen Burkett is Assistant Professor of Music at Western Carolina University. She holds a Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University and has taught courses on topics including analysis of rock music, women and popular music in the U.S., and rock criticism. Her research has focused on composers and their creative work processes; her analytic essay on composer Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Piano Study in Mixed Accents is included in a volume entitled Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Worlds. More recent research concerns the presentation of music in <i>Seventeen</i> magazine in the 1940s. Her scholarly work has appeared in the <i>Journal of the Society for American Music</i>, <i>Popular Music and Society</i>, and <i>College Music Symposium</i>, and she has presented her research at regional and national conferences including Society for Music Theory, Society for American Music, Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, the EMP Pop Conference, and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities at University of Oxford. An accomplished pianist and harpsichordist, she enjoys performing 20th- and 21st-century repertoire. She has studied piano with Carolyn Bridger, Mary Ann Covert, and Gary Wolf, and harpsichord with Elisabeth Wright and Karyl Louwenaar-Lueck. In addition to her professional activities, Burkett enjoys working in traditional fiber arts, spinning and dyeing wool.

Education

• Ph D, Indiana University-Bloomington, Music Theory
• MM, Ithaca College, Piano Performance
• BA, University of Central Florida, Music

Teaching Interests

music theory and musicianship skills (aural skills and class piano); music for the non-music major; popular music; women and music

Research Interests

composition pedagogy in the twentieth century; counterpoint; history of music theory; the presentation of music in _Seventeen_ magazine, 1944-1981