Musicology
alyssacottle@g.harvard.edu
Alyssa Cottle is a Ph.D. candidate in Historical Musicology. She is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Latin American Studies. Her current dissertation project, “From the Local to the Transnational: Music, Sound, and Politics in Chile (1960s-1973),” demonstrates how a wide variety of musical and sound-making practices contributed to political thought and revolutionary struggle in Chile in the years leading up to and during Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government (1970-73). By reconceiving understandings of musical genre, her dissertation sheds light on the heterogeneity of political imaginaries enacted through music and sound. Furthermore, her project draws new connections between local and transnational networks of musical exchange and political activism during the global Cold War.
In 2015, Alyssa graduated magna cum laude from Occidental College with a B.A. in Music. At Occidental, she performed in several ensembles as a jazz saxophonist. Her senior honors thesis considered John Cage’s concept of “music of contingency,” and Cage’s ideas and attitudes towards improvisation. Also prior to graduate school, Alyssa undertook a fellowship from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, with which she spent nine months living in Argentina, conducting research on Alberto Ginastera and his role as the director of the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM). Her research has also been supported by grants from the Society for American Music, the Northwestern University Library, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and Harvard University. She has presented her research findings both domestically and internationally.
Photo credit: Nicole Loeb