Since joining the faculty in 1990, Ronald Radano has balanced his teaching between the programs in musicology and ethnomusicology and the Department of Afro-American Studies. His primary work is that of an Americanist with special interests in cultural theory, race, globalization, popular music and the history of North American black music. He is author and editor of three books, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique (1993), Music and Racial Imagination (2000; co-edited with Philip V. Bohlman) and Lying up a Nation: Race and Black Music (2003), all published by the University of Chicago Press. Currently, he is principally at work on a new book on black music, cultural ownership and aesthetics while also launching two secondary projects: the first, a study of the global circulation of African-American musical rhythm; the second, a critical meditation on private listening and the crisis of taste.

A 1997 Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Radano has held visiting appointments at Harvard and the University of Chicago, as well as research residencies at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Pennsylvania (as a Rockefeller Fellow), the Institute for Research in the Humanities (Wisconsin), Harvard (W. E. B. Du Bois Institute) and New York University (Institute for African American Affairs). He is co-editor (with Josh Kun) of the new series, "Refiguring American Music," published by Duke University Press. His course offerings include the new "Music and Culture Workshop," which draws together an interdisciplinary assembly of graduate students and faculty pursuing original research.