(920) 424-7028
chybowsj@uwosh.edu

Julia J. Chybowski earned a Ph.D. in music history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh where she teaches introductory courses in Western and Non-western music, survey courses for music majors and the general student, as well as upper-level seminars in musical exoticism, social impact of music technology, and musical cultures of the United States.  Chybowski’s interest in pedagogy and educational reform has motivated her to serve on UWO’s General Education Reform Committee and present innovative curricular and pedagogical ideas at state and national conferences.  She also serves UWO and the surrounding community as music liaison for the Cooperative Academic Partnership Program and faculty member of the campus American Democracy Project.

Chybowski’s doctoral dissertation, “Developing American Taste: A Cultural History of the Early-Twentieth-Century Music Appreciation Movement” has led to further research of musical culture in the United States.  Presently, she works on the biography and reception of African American vocalist, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield who toured in the mid-to-late nineteenth century as the “Black Swan.”  This research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and grants from the University of Wisconsin and is published in The Grove Dictionary of American Music and the American Music Research Journal.  She has presented her work at national and international meetings of the Society for American Music, The American Musicological Society, Feminist Theory and Music Conference, and at numerous college campuses and community events. 

Chybowski’s first music degree was in performance, with an emphasis in harp.  She was a busy freelance musician through graduate school and for about a decade, directed the Harp Program for the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra, taught Continuing Education music classes, and maintained a large private teaching studio in Madison, Wisconsin.  A founder of and former Associate Program Director for the Madison Early Music Festival, she often returns to teach historical harp at this annual summer workshop.  Although her primary career focus is now as musicologist, she is also dedicated to a small studio of Fox Valley-area harpists to whom she teaches lessons.