Doctor of Philosophy in Music - Critical and Comparative Studies

The CCS program is a pioneer in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of music and sound. The program exposes students to numerous disciplinary approaches without centering any one in particular. We invite students to think with us about reimagining the music PhD in the context of the changing landscape of higher education, continuing to think about the role of creative practice inand multi-modal approaches to graduate training at a public university. Our program makes space for students with a wide variety of previous educational experiences. This reflects our faculty who research and teach across multiple disciplines including anthropology, musicology and ethnomusicology, sound studies, performance studies, history, philosophy, rhetoric, composition, politics, and legal studies. Recent graduate seminars have been organized around topics such as music and memory, curating sound, gender, sexuality, and disability, ethnographic writing and positionality, the Black voice, sound and the law, opera, the critical history of American folk music, music and pleasure, and Afrofuturism. We encourage students to take PhD-level courses beyond the Music Department, participate in performance, and engage with local communities.

Submit the following materials to complete your application:
A Statement of Purpose
TOEFL Score (for International applicants)
Transcripts
Two Letters of Recommendation
Two Writing Samples (for CCS applicants)
A Portfolio of Representative Work (for CCT applicants)
Application Fee
You can find information concerning fee waivers available to applicants here.
GRE scores are no longer required for admission to the Ph.D. program in Music.

The minimum internet-based (iBT) TOEFL score requirement is 90 (including sectional minimums of 22 in speaking, 22 in writing, 23 in reading and 23 in listening). The minimum paper-based TOEFL score requirement is 600. Applicants may submit scores from the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as an alternative to the TOEFL exam. The minimum IELTS score requirement is 7.0 in each section