Mark Pottinger

Department Chairperson of Communication,Sound,Media Arts

Professor, Department of Music and Theater

Dr. Pottinger is Professor of Music and Musicology and Chair of the Communication, Sound and Media Arts Department, where he founded the Sound Studies program, an area of research that is at the intersection of musicology, acoustics, audio technology, and performance studies. Winner in 2017 of the prestigious Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, Dr. Pottinger is the author of a number of publications on the music and cultural life of nineteenth-century Europe and the contemporary listening environment. His current book project, Science and the Romantic Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century Opera (Boydell & Brewer), examines the natural sciences in the first half of the nineteenth century and their relationship to the supernatural as found in early German, Italian, and French romantic opera. He is also completing a book on Lucia di Lammermoor for the New Cambridge Music Handbook series for Cambridge University Press. Noted for his exuberant energy and passionate conversations about the power of music, Dr. Pottinger regularly lectures for the Metropolitan Opera and their HD Live in Schools education program. He is currently serving as co-chief editor of Sound Studies Review: An International Peer-Reviewed Music Journal (Brepols Publishers), which is housed in the department and supported by upper-level students in the Sound Studies program.

Education

  • Ph.D., Musicology: CUNY, The Graduate Center (2005)
  • M.Phil., Musicology: CUNY, The Graduate Center (2002)
  • M.Mus., Opera Studies: University of Leeds, England, UK (1996)
  • B.A. (cum laude): Washington University in St. Louis (1995)

Courses Taught

  • MUSC 150 Roots: Music
  • MUSC 290 Early Music Soundscapes: Antiquity to 1800
  • MUSC 305 Music and French Identity: Paris and Versailles (Study Abroad)
  • MUSC 323 Music and Romanticism
  • MUSC 325 Modern Music and the Avant-Garde
  • MUSC 400 Spl Topic: Opera as Text
  • MUSC 400 Spl Topic: Opera, Religion, and Confinement
  • MUSC 410 Indep. Study: Hermeneutics of Heavy Metal
  • MUSC 410 Indep. Study: Advanced Music Theory
  • MUSC 410 Indep. Study: Education and the Non-Profit in New York City
  • MUSC 410 Indep. Study: Jazz, Hip Hop, and Black Social Justice
  • MUSC 410 Indep. Study: Women and Music of the 1960s 
  • Research
    • Musicology, History of Science, Opera Studies, Nineteenth-Century Europe, Romanticism, Sound Studies, Concert Hall Acoustics
  • Publications and Scholarly Activities

    Recent/Forthcoming Publications:

    Forthcoming: New Cambridge Music Handbook, Donizetti: 'Lucia di Lammermoor' (Cambridge University Press). Due for publication in October 2025.

    Forthcoming: Science and the Romantic Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century Opera (Boydell & Brewer). Due for completion in 2025.

    Nov. 2023: "Sound Recordings, Concert Halls, and the Politics of Live Music Listening,” Sound Studies Review: An International Peer-Reviewed Music Journal (Brepols Publishers), vol. 1., no. 1 (Spring 2023), pp. 41-66 [DOI:https://doi.org/10.1484/J.SSR.5.136469]

    Nov. 2023: Book Review for Sound Studies Review: An International Peer-Reviewed Music Journal (Brepols Publishers), vol. 1., no. 1 (Spring 2023), pp. 107-111, of Edward J. Gillin, Sound Authorities: Scientific and Musical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2021) [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1484/J.SSR.5.136471]

    March 2023: “Ritter's Musical Aesthetics, Der Freischütz, and the Certainty of Nature in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany," The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory (Taylor & Francis), Special Issue: "The Role of Uncertainty in Romantic Philosophy, Science, Literature, and Theory," Eds. Jocelyn Holland and Elizabeth Millán, vol. 98, no. 1, pp. 80-95; Winner of the Richard Sussman Essay Prize  [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00168890.2022.2158717]

    Dec. 2022: Book Review for the Journal of the American Musicological Society (University of California Press), vol. 75, no. 3 (Fall 2022), pp. 599-603, of Kira Thurman, Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021) [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.3.599]

    May 2022: "Buffalo Bill and the Sound of America During the 1889 World's Fair," America in the French Imaginary, 1789-1914: Music, Revolution and Race, Eds. Diana Hallman and César Leal (Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer), pp. 265-295 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105393.012]

    June 2021: “Concert Hall Acoustics and the Sounding Heritage of the Inter-War Period in America: The Coolidge Auditorium (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1925)," Change Over Time: An International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press), Special Issue: "Sounding Heritage," Ed. Pamela Jordan, vol. 9, no. 2 (Fall 2019), pp. 214-231 [DOI: 10.1353/cot.2019.0012 ]

    July 2020:  “Lucia and the Auscultation of Disease in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), Special Issue: “Music, Medical Science and the Body," Ed. Mark A. Pottinger, Vol. 19, No. 1 (April 2022), pp. 55-84 [DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409820000075]

    September 2019:  “French Music Criticism in the Nineteenth Century, 1789-1870,” The Cambridge History of Music Criticism, Ed. Christopher Dingle (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 125-146 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139795425.008]

    April 2019: Book Review for Music & Letters (Oxford University Press), vol. ix, no. 4 (November 2018), pp. 683-685, of Grand Opera Outside Paris: Opera on the Move in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Ed. Jens Hesselager (London and New York: Routledge, 2018) [Project MUSE: muse.jhu.edu/article/724293.]

    August 2017: “Deep Listening: Selling and defining the experience of ‘live’ music,” The Berlin Journal, American Academy in Berlin, online edition, Fall 2017 (https://www.americanacademy.de/deep-listening/)

    December 2015:  “Wagner in Exile: Paris, Halévy and The Queen,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review, vol. 12, no. 2 (Dec. 2015), pp. 253-284 [DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409815000324]

     

    Recent Conference Papers:

    November 2024: Chair and Respondent to Paper Session, “The Outsider Within: Black and African Voices and European Music,” The American Musicological Society (AMS) Annual National Conference, Palmer House Hilton Hotel, Chicago, Illinois

    October 2023: Chair and Respondent to Paper Session, “Religious Worlds & Representations,” Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Midwest Regional Undergraduate Conference, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri

    November 2022: Chair and Respondent to Paper Session, “Music and Medicine,” The American Musicological Society (AMS), Society for Music Theory (SMT), and the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Joint National Conference, Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana

    October 2019: Chair and Respondent to Paper Session, “Transnationalisms,” France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918 Pre-Meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) Annual National Conference, The Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts

    March 2019: “Sounding Space / Sounding Self,” Imagination, Integrity & Innovation Conference (The Maxine Greene Institute), Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York

    September 2018:  “Deep Listening: The Politics of the Live Music Experience in the Age of Post-Truth,” International Music Conference, “Music and Musicology in the Age of Post-Truth,” University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    July 2018:  “The Sound of Invisible Light: Der Freischütz and the Romantic Science of Johann Wilhelm Ritter,” 20th Biennial International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, England

    March 2017:  “Science and the Sound of Disease in Lucia di Lammermoor (Paris, 1837),” Music and the Body Between Revolutions: 1789-1870, The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, New York, New York

    July 2016:  “Physiology and the Science of Hysteria in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor," 19th Biennial International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, University of Oxford, Oxford, England

     

    Recent Special Lectures/Invited Talks:

    March 2025: “Buffalo Bill and the Sound of America,” Invited lecture, Bard College, Berlin, Germany (Online Presentation)

    October 2024: “Science and the Romantic Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century Opera,” Invited lecture, Bennington College, Bennington, VT

    September 2024: “The Sound of Nature in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Invited lecture, Musicology Lecture Series, Duke University, Durham, NC

    March 2024: “Music, Sound & the Matter in Between,” Public Lecture/Conversation with sound artist Thessia Machado, American Academy in Berlin, The Goethe-Institut, New York, NY

    January 2024: “Gender and the Search for Identity in Bizet's Carmen,” Public Lecture,The Metropolitan Opera National Educators' Conference, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, New York (Online Presentation) (YouTube Clip)

    December 2023: “Sound and Nature in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany: Der Freischütz and the Romantic Science of Johann Wilhelm Ritter," Invited Lecture, Research Seminar, University of Manchester, Manchester, England (Virtual Zoom Session)

    December 2023: “New Approaches in Phenomenology and Ontology: Ideas of Time, Space and Sound/Noise," Invited Lecture, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky (Virtual Zoom Session)

    April 2023: “Mozart's Don Giovanni, or, The Rake Punished,” Public Lecture,The Metropolitan Opera National Educators' Conference, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, New York (Online Presentation) (YouTube Clip)

    March 2023: “On Science and Nature," Invited Lecture, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont

    November 2022: “Medical Science and Female Madness in Lucia," Invited Lecture, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont

    November 2022: “Verdi's Traviata and the Diseased Voice," Pre-Concert Lecture for Bennington College, The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center

    October 2022: “Concert Hall Acoustics and the Sonic Ideal in Early Twentieth-Century America: The Coolidge Auditorium (1925),” Public Lecture, American Musicological Society-Library of Congress Lecture Series, Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building, Coolidge Auditorium, Washington, D.C.

    October 2022: “Cherubini's Medea,” Public Lecture, The Metropolitan Opera: National Educators’ Conference, HD Live in Schools, The Rose Building, Lincoln Center

    May 2022: "Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Nineteenth-Century Female Madness," The Metropolitan Opera Guild, New York, New York

    May 2022: "The Certainty of Nature in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany: Der Freischütz and the Romantic Science of Johann Wilhelm Ritter," Special Faculty Lacture: The Dante Seminar, Manhattan College, Rivedale, New York

    April 2022: "Code-Switching in Mozart's Le Nozze de Figaro," Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont (Virtual Presentation)

    April 2022: ""Il dolce suono:" Lucia di Lammermoor in the Rust Belt," The Metropolitan Opera National Educators' Conference, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, New York (Online Presentation) (YouTube Clip)

    April 2022: "Opera and the Identity of the Self," Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (Virtual Presentation)

    April 2022: "The Certainty of Nature in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany: Der Freischütz and the Romantic Science of Johann Wilhelm Ritter," The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, Case-Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

    October 2021: "Fire Shut Up in My Bones: Opera and the Art of Narrative Interiority," The Metropolitan Opera, HD Live in Schools, Book Club, New York, New York (Online Live-Streaming Presentation) (YouTube Clip)

    October 2021: "Excavating Eurydice: Breaking Open the Orpheus Myth," The Metropolitan Opera National Educators' Conference, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, New York (Online Presentation) (YouTube Clip)

    January 2021: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Bride! The Romantic World of Lucia and the Science Behind Her Madness," The Metropolitan Opera National Educators' Conference, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, New York (Online Presentation) (YouTube Clip)

  • Professional Experience and Memberships

    Current Board and Committee Assignments

    Fall 2025—  : Kakos School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Representative to the Strategic Planning Committee, Manhattan University, Riverdale, New York

    Fall 2022—Fall 2023: Chair of the Committee on the Annual Meeting (CAM) for the American Musicological Society's 89th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, 9-12 November 2023

    Fall 2021—Spring 2022: Member of the Committee on the Annual Meeting (CAM) for the American Musicological Society's 88th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, 10-13 November 2022, held jointly with the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Society for Music Theory

    Fall 2021—Spring 2022: Member of the Steering Committee for the "Theorizing African-American Music" Conference, Case Western-Reserve University, June 16-18, 2022

    Fall 2020 - Member of the Board of Directors, The Maxine Greene Institute

    Fall 2020 - Arts Faculty Representative to the School of Liberal Arts Core Committee, Manhattan College, New York

    Fall 2018 - Faculty Representative/Deputy to the Title IX Committee, Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York

    Fall 2018 - Visual & Performing Arts Faculty Representative to the Robert Christen Fund, Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York

    Fall 2018–Spring 2022: Alvin H. Johnson AMS (American Musicological Society) 50 Dissertation Fellowship Committee


    Professional Memberships

    • American Musicological Society (AMS)
    • College Art Association (CAA)
    • College Music Society (CMS)
    • France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918 (FMC)
    • Goethe Society of North America (GSNA)
    • International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM)
    • The Royal Musical Association (RMS)
    • The Centre for Ninteenth-Century Studies (CNCS)
  • Honors, Awards, and Grants

    Awards/Fellowships/Honors

    • Spring 2025 - Finalist, Br. Casimir Gabriel Costello Award for Teaching Excellence
    • Fall 2024 - The Joseph Kerman Fund, Publication Subvention, American Musicological Society
    • Fall 2024 - The Richard Sussman Essay Prize, Goethe Society of North America
    • Spring 2024 - Finalist, Br. Casimir Gabriel Costello Award for Teaching Excellence
    • Fall 2022–Spring 2023 - Manhattan College Sabbatical for Scholarly Research
    • Spring 2022 - Finalist, Br. Casimir Gabriel Costello Award for Teaching Excellence 
    • Spring 2018 - Finalist,  Br. Casimir Gabriel Costello Award for Teaching Excellence 
    • Spring 2017 - The Berlin Prize, Nina Maria Gorrissen Fellow of History, American Academy in Berlin, Berlin, Germany
    • Spring 2017 - Manhattan College Sabbatical for Scholarly Research
    • Summer 2012 - Scholar-in-Residence, La Casa Zia Lina, Elba, Italy, Dr. Robert and Lina-Thyll Dürr Foundation, Stansstad, Switzertland 
    • Fall 2010–Spring 2011 - Manhattan College Sabbatical for Scholarly Research
    • Spring 2010 - Elected into the Pen & Sword Honors Society, Manhattan College
    • Fall 2001 - Finalist, Institute of International Education (IIE), US Student Fulbright Program to Paris, France
    • Fall 1997-1999 - Dean K. Harrison Fellowship, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York
    • Spring 1993–1995 - Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Lous, Missouri

    Grants

    • Fall 2024 - New York State Council of the Arts
    • Summer 2019 - Manhattan College Summer Research Grant
    • Summer 2014 - Manhattan College Summer Research Grant
    • Winter 2003 - Dissertation Research Travel Grant, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
    • Summer 2001 - Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Research Grant for Dissertation Research to Paris, France
  • Other
    • March 2025: Panelist, “Opera, Power and Performance: Cultural and Sonic Dynamics on the Stage and Beyond,” Colloque France: Music, Culture, 1789-1918, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (Zoom Session)
    • March 2025: Panelist, The Metropolitan Opera Radio Quiz, Robert K. Johnson Foundation-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, Live Radio Broadcast of Puccini's La Bohème, The Metropolitan Opera (8 March 2025)
    • August 2024: Panelist, “Music and the Literary Imagination, Part II: Musical Romanticism and Literature,” The 39th Annual Bard Music Festival: Berlioz and His World, The Fisher Center, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
    • January 2024: Panelist, The Metropolitan Opera Radio Quiz, Robert K. Johnson Foundation-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, Live Radio Broadcast of Puccini's La Bohème, The Metropolitan Opera (13 January 2024)
    • May-July 2019: Faculty Advisor for Student-led Research, "Artistic Interpretations of Tristan und Isolde: Gottfried van Strassbourg and Richard Wagner,” Branigan Scholars Fund for Undergraduate Research in the Humanities
    • May 2017: Radio Interview Respondent, “Unpacking Sonic Migrations” with Satch Hoyt, Das Radio der documenta 14: SAVVY Funk, Berlin, Germany (Aired 20 June 2017; http://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/das-radio-der-documenta-14-savvy-funk-programm-vom-20-juni.3267.de.html?dram:article_id=389024)
    • January 2017: Video Interview Respondent, Fellow Spotlight, American Academy in Berlin, Berlin, Germany (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-EOoOzuNKA).
    • May 2016: TV Interview Respondent, “The Success of Hamilton,” WOWOW TV Tokyo, for the 2016 Tony Awards, New York, New York (Aired 13 June 2016; Interview Clips in Full Segment).