Juliet Forshaw

Juliet Forshaw is Assistant Professor at SUNY Oswego.

Forshaw received her Ph.D. in Historical Musicology after receiving a B.A. in Music from Princeton. Her research interests include Russian music, nineteenth-century opera, vocality, and heavy metal. Her dissertation, "Dangerous Tenors, Heroic Basses, and Non-Ingénues: Singers and the Envoicing of Social Values in Russian Opera, 1836-1905" explores the ways in which opera reflected social change in the volatile late Russian Empire. She examines the role of star singers in that process: by exerting creative influence on composers and creating idealized depictions of both authority figures and rebels, charismatic opera singers crystallized the Russian intelligentsia's evolving attitudes toward political authority, gender roles, and radicalism.  By delving into neglected, untranslated primary sources, Forshaw's work thus employs a novel, singer-centric approach to operatic masterworks and provides a new perspective on Russian opera's engagement with the political and social issues of the era leading up to the Revolution. She has presented papers based on her research at international conferences in Rome and Durham, England, and most recently at the American Musicological Society conference in New Orleans. She defended her dissertation in March 2014. Forshaw also has a strong secondary research interest in heavy metal and in Summer 2012 taught the undergraduate seminar "Heavy Metal: A Music, Culture, and Philosophy of Enmity" at Columbia. Her writings on metal have been published in the journal Current Musicology, where she was also Reviews Editor for Issue 92.  Forshaw has also had the pleasure of teaching Masterpieces of Western Music at Columbia for six semesters. She was a member of ensembles such as Collegium Musicum, Morningside Opera, and the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble. A classically trained singer, she also sang with the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York.