Cana F. McGhee

Thesis: Botanical Musicalities: Listening with Plant-Human Encounter

Cana (KAY-nuh) is a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at Harvard University. Her research and teaching rely on methods from environmental studies and history of science to explore how revising ideas about listenership and musicality can shift our relationships with more-than-human nature. Her dissertation theorizes the notion of "botanical musicalities," a term she develops to refer to treatments of plants as musical actors in both audible and inaudible ways. Her case studies consider several musical and sonic encounters among plants and humans, including: representations of botanical scents in 19th century mélodies; ambient electronic music made via bio-sonification; and plant-themed audiovisual digital media. Cana's work has been generously supported by the Center for European Studies and the Mahindra Humanities Center.

Her writing has appeared in Musicology Now and in a special issue of Open Cultural Studies on Critical Plant Studies, and will be published in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Music and the Environment. While at Harvard, she has served as GMF Chair, co-coordinated several multidisciplinary symposia, and maintains an active life as a choral alto. Previously, she earned her BA in Music and French from Emory University, in her hometown of Atlanta.