Overview
Nic Vigilante (they/them) is an ethnographer and theorist whose work explores performance, sound, virtuality, and queer Asian American aesthetics. They are currently a PhD Candidate in Music & Sound Studies at Cornell University, where they are also a Dean’s Excellence Fellow and graduate affiliate with the Media Studies and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs. Their dissertation, titled “The Sonic Unreal,” is an interactive web platform exploring music and performance at the interstices of Los Angeles’ Gaysian nightlife community, esports fandoms, and musical communities in virtual worlds.
As an award-winning scholar and pedagogue in the digital humanities, Nic’s work bridges multimodal scholarship, digital ethnography, and the cultural study of emerging technologies such as generative AI, blockchain, and virtual reality. In 2026, Nic was awarded the Ian Lancashire Award for Graduate Student Promise by the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities. They hold the Canadian Certificate in Digital Humanities and were a 2025 Summer Graduate Digital Humanities Fellow at Cornell University and a 2026 fellow at Vassar College’s Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship.
Nic was a member of the inaugural cohort of ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Innovation Fellows in 2023-24 and has received prizes including the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Ric Trimillos Award (2022), the Cornell Department of Performing and Media Arts’ Marvin Carlson Award (2025), and an Honorable Mention for the American Studies Association’s Gene Wise-Warren Susman Prize (2024), among others. Additionally, their work in curriculum development, mentoring, and syllabus design has been recognized with awards including Oberlin College’s Norm Robertson Prize (2016), Cornell’s Don M. Randel Teaching and Research Fellowship (2025), and four endowed prizes from Cornell’s John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines.
As a violist, violinist, singer, and conductor specializing in new music and historical performance, Nic has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the Seoul Opera House, and the Beijing Concert Hall and alongside ensembles including the Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, American String Quartet, and Roomful of Teeth.
Nic holds an MA in Music & Sound Studies from Cornell University, a BA in Chemistry from Oberlin College, and a BM in Viola Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Their recent and forthcoming work can be found in Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, The Oxford Handbook of Online Music Cultures, Gender and Sexuality in Video Game Sound (Routledge), Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and The Journal of Extreme Anthropology.