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