Carmel Raz
Assistant Professor, Music
Academic focus:
History of music theory, history of musical cognition music and the history of science, "global" history of music theory
Current research project:
I am currently investigating a tradition of texts concerning the habitual, automatic actions involved in playing a musical instrument in a variety of philosophical texts by authors from Avicenna to Locke and beyond. Musical proficiency, it turns out, is a recurrent trope in discussions of various aspects of mind-body relations. I am exploring how successive writers' alterations of details with regard to the instrument, the agency and the identity of the performer reflect the influence of musical culture on a central philosophical debate.
Previous positions:
- Research Group Leader, “Histories of Music, Mind, and Body” Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2018–2025
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, 2015–2018
Academic background:
- Ph.D., Music theory, Yale University, 2015
- M.A., Composition, University of Chicago, 2006
- Diplom. Violin Performance, Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler,” Germany, 2004
Last book read:
“The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins
In your own time/when not working:
Spending time with my husband and son, spending time with friends, traveling, cooking, going to concerts
Courses you’re most looking forward to teaching:
Music and Madness!!!!
What most excites you about Cornell:
I'm excited to join the intellectual community here, and I've been really impressed by the openness and interdisciplinarity of the university. And after six years in a research-only institution, I am really looking forward to teaching Cornell students.
