Graduate studies in music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison provide students with a supportive environment within which to pursue imaginative research. Our degree programs in music history, ethnomusicology, and music theory are small and flexible, offering rigorous and comprehensive instruction in each of the three musicologies grounded on a close interaction and cooperation among graduate students and their faculty colleagues. At the same time, interconnections between the three graduate programs introduce students to a broad range of musical practices and different methodologies. Our commitment to interdisciplinary research encourages students to develop original approaches to music drawing on recent musicological and theoretical initiatives. The curriculum is innovative and wide-ranging, with course offerings in archival and source studies, notation, the construction of music theories, genre, influence and reception, performance practice, race and gender, music criticism, music as intellectual history, and music as social practice. Graduate students may also complement their music studies with courses in a wide range of related disciplines that—at the doctoral level—constitute the minor. Within the School of Music possible minors include performance, composition, and music education. Other possible minors include anthropology, area studies, international studies, women's studies, Afro-American Studies, artificial intelligence and computer science, cognitive psychology, linguistics, curriculum and instruction, philosophy, comparative literature, critical and cultural studies (through the Havens Center for Social Research), history, art history, history of science, and theater and drama. In all cases, our graduate programs seek both to deepen and widen the domain of musical discourse and to encourage students to follow their own intellectual inclinations and to discover their own musical voices. Students are encouraged to become active in their chosen fields at the regional and national level.


At the Ph.D. level, students conduct advanced ethnomusicological research and studies in a related minor area in preparation for dissertation research. Seminars cover a wide range of topics, including cultural theory of music, popular music studies, organology, fieldwork, and the intellectual history of music ethnography. Knowledge of two foreign languages is required (Reading knowledge of German and French, or one European language and one field language).

Degree Requirements
Credits may be carried over from the master's level.

• Ethnomusicology seminars and lecture courses (for example 660-915: Seminar in Ethnomusicology; or approved substitutions), 18 cr.
• Cultural theory, 6 cr.
• Bibliography or research methods (660-619 or 660-720), 3 cr.
• Graduate-level Music History or Music Theory, 3 cr.
• Minor, 10-12 cr.
• Language requirement: two languages at intermediate level
• Colloquium (660-900), 0 cr. (required each semester)

The doctoral minor provides breadth and depth to the Ph.D degree. To insure coherence a minor program must be approved by the appropriate department, a student's advisor, or the Director of Graduate Studies, and must include courses at the 300-level or above. A minor requires 12 credits of work.

Students have a variety of options, including completing an internal minor within the School of Music or, more typically, within a department outside the School of Music (e.g., anthropology, communication arts, history, etc.). Students may, in consultation with the Director of Graduate Studies, devise a distributed minor that brings together courses from a variety of departments around a particular topic or area of interest. (e.g., postcolonial criticism, critical race theory, media studies, etc.)