Visiting Speakers

Michael Platt, PhD, is a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennslyvania.

Thomas Porcello is Professor of Anthropology and has served both as Director of Media Studies and as Co-Director of the Media Studies Development Project. Dr. Porcello is trained in linguistic anthropology and ethnomusicology, and has done extensive research in sound recording studios on technological and discursive practices involved in popular music production.

Donald Robotham was educated at the University of the West Indies and obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1987. He has worked extensively in the English-speaking Caribbean as well as among the goldminers of Ghana in West Africa. His interests are in the issues of Development in both the Caribbean and Ghana, in particular, the difficulties which Developing Countries face during a period of advanced capitalist globalization. Issues of race, ethnicity, class, alternative modernities, immigration and how to overcome these divisions and unite people, preoccupy him.

Pierre Rosanvallon is a French intellectual and historian, named professor at the Collège de France in 2001.

Matt Sakakeeny is an ethnomusicologist, journalist, and musician in New Orleans, where he has lived since 1997. His book, Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, is a firsthand account of the precarious lives of brass band musicians in New Orleans.

David Samuels has worked broadly on issues of music, language, and expressive culture. His research includes topics in poetics and semiotics, history and memory, technology, and Native American and popular culture.

Christopher Scheer holds a PhD from the University of Michigan in historical musicology. Before coming to Utah State University, he taught at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and the HarpArts Summer Retreat. A scholar of late nineteenth and early twentieth century British music, Scheer's dissertation considered the influence of British Imperial and Wagnerian cultures on the compositional development of Gustav Holst.

Alexandra Schwartz is a member of The New Yorker editorial staff and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing for 2014.