Aaron A. Fox

Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology
Director of Center for Ethnomusicology (Fall 2023)
Director of Undergraduate Studies (Fall 2023)
Dept. Rep. to Columbia College (Fall 2023)
Dept. Rep. to General Studies & Special Programs (Fall 2023)
Office Address: 
804 Dodge Hall (Mail Code 1822)
Office Hours: 
By appointment. Please email. Do not call, except for urgent situations.
(212) 854-7185

Aaron Fox came to Columbia in 1997. He  taught from 1994-1997 at the University of Washington, Seattle in the Departments of Anthropology and Music. He holds the PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin (1995), and the AB in Music from Harvard College.

Aaron chaired the Department from 2008 to 2011. He has frequently served as Director of the Center for Ethnomusicology since 2003.  

In recent years Aaron has focused on issues of cultural and intellectual property and the repatriation of Native American cultural resources, as part of a broader interest in cultural survival and sustainability and music-centered community activism. His current project entails work with several Indigenous communities to return and recover recordings held by Columbia University’s Center for Ethnomusicology. His most recent papers include

2016: “The Archive of the Archive.” In The Routledge Companion to Cultural Property. J. Anderson and H. Geismar, eds., Routledge Publishers.

2014: “Repatriation as Re-Animation Through Reciprocity.” In The Cambridge History of World Music: Vol. 1 (North America), P. Bohlman, ed., Cambridge University Press.

Aaron has also published extensively on American country music and working-class culture.  Aaron's book, Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture, was published by Duke University Press in 2004.

 

Degrees from Other Institutions: 
AB
Harvard College
1988
PhD
Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
1995