- Phone:
- (812) 855-4124
- Email:
- rdirksen@iu.edu
- Department:
- Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
- Campus:
- IU Bloomington
800 E. 3rd St., 257
800 E. 3rd St., 257
About Rebecca Dirksen
Education
- Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2012
- M.A., University of Roehampton, London, 2006
- B.M., Lawrence University and Conservatory of Music, 2003
Research interests
- Haiti, Caribbean, Latin America
- ecomusicology, diverse environmentalisms, sacred ecologies, environmental justice
- carnival, protest, revolution, politically engaged music
- creative responses to crisis, disaster, poverty, violence, trauma
- development discourse, grassroots development
- arts activism and international NGOs, aid, and humanitarianism
- intangible cultural heritage and cultural policy
- archives, archival silences, hidden archives and accidental archivists
- Haitian classical/art music
- film as ethnography
- applied/engaged/activist ethnomusicology
Courses recently taught
- Applied Ethnomusicology (grad seminar)
- Ecomusicology (grad seminar)
- Filmmaking as Ethnography (grad seminar)
- Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (grad seminar)
- Music and Disaster
- Music and Development
- Caribbean Carnival
- Caribbean Music, Sacred Ecologies, and the Environment
- Making Films: Music and Folklore
Selected awards + distinctions
- Honourable Mention for the International Council for Traditional Music Book Prize for After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy, 2021
- Interdisciplinary Fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 2020-2021
- Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award, 2019
- Humanities Without Walls The Work of the Humanities in a Changing Climate Grand Research Challenge: “Field to Media: Applied Musicology for a Changing Climate,” 2018-2020. With Mark Pedelty, PI (University of Minnesota); co-PIs Rebecca Dirksen (Indiana University) and Michael Silvers (University of Illinois)
- Radcliffe Fellow 2016-17 at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
- American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship, 2016-2017 (declined)
- IU Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning / Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Active Learning Grant, 2015
- Plaque d’honneur « pour son dévouement à l’avancement de la musique
haïtienne », Conseil d’administration de la Banque de la République d’Haïti, January 2014