Professor, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies; Women's and Gender Studies; and the Residential College
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About
Naomi André is Professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Residential College at the University of Michigan. She received her B.A. from Barnard College and M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her research focuses on opera and issues surrounding gender, voice, and race in the US, Europe, and South Africa. Her publications include topics on Italian opera, Schoenberg, women composers, and teaching opera in prisons. Her book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) won the Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music. Her earlier books include Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (2006) and Blackness in Opera (2012, co-edited collection). She has edited and contributed to clusters of articles in African Studies and the Journal of the Society for American Music. Currently, she is a co-editor for the essay collection African Performance Arts and Political Acts (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming in 2021). She is the inaugural Scholar in Residence at the Seattle Opera and a founding member of the Black Opera Research Network (BORN).
Recent Courses
Race and Identity in Music
Introduction to Afroamerican Studies
History of the Symphony
Gender and Music
Selected Articles
"Complexities in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess: Historical and Performing Contexts," The Cambridge Companion to Gershwin, edited by Anna Celenza, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2019), 182-196.
“Beyoncé’s Homecoming: Why the Opera World Should Take Notes,” CNN Style, April 22, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/beyonce-homecoming-opera/index.html
“Women’s Roles in Meyerbeer’s Operas: How Italian Heroines are Reflected in French Grand Opera” in Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu. Edited by Victoria Johnson, Jane Fulcher and Thomas Ertman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007, 87-114.
“Entering the Present: Music Meets Race.” Action, Criticism, Theory for Music Education. (volume 4, no. 3, 2005: 1-12). [http://mas.siue.edu/ACT/index.html].
“Teaching Opera in Prison,” in The Intersectional Approach: Transforming Women’s and Gender Studies through Race, Class, and Gender, eds. Michele Tracy Berger and Kathleen Guidroz. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming.
Books Published
Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. University of Illinois Press, 2018
Blackness in Opera, ed. University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera, Indiana University Press, 2006.
