Boynton, Susan

About Me

Position/Title:

Associate Professor

Susan Boynton joined the Columbia faculty in 2000, having taught at the University of Oregon. She has received several grants, including two Fulbrights, a Rome Prize, and a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (as co-investigator with Isabelle Cochelin, University of Toronto). In 2003 she was a recipient of the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Award from the School of General Studies as well as the Hettleman Summer Faculty Development Fellowship. Her research interests include liturgical music in medieval Western monasticism, particularly the abbeys of Cluny and Farfa; monastic education; and the role of women in medieval song. With Isabelle Cochelin, she is general editor of the interdisciplinary series Disciplina Monastica: Studies on Medieval Monastic Life/Etudes sur la vie monastique au moyen age (Brepols Publishers, Belgium). Prof. Boynton co-chairs the Interdepartmental Committee on Medieval and Renaissance Studies [1]. She is also co-author of the website Celebrating the Liturgy's Books: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New York City [2].

Academic Background

Degrees:

BA Music (Yale 1988), MA Medieval Studies (Yale 1990)

Diplome d'etudes medievales (Universite Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1992)

MFA Music and Women's Studies (Brandeis, 1996), PhD, Musicology (Brandeis, 1997)

Selected Publications:

Musical Childhoods and the Cultures of Youth, edited with Roe-Min Kok (Wesleyan University Press, 2006)

Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, December 2005).

“The Theological Role of Office Hymns in a Ninth-Century Trinitarian Controversy,” in In principio erat verbum. Mélanges P. Tombeur, ed. Benoît-Michel Tock, Textes et Etudes du Moyen Âge 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 19-44

“The Didactic Function and Context of Eleventh-Century Glossed Hymnaries,” in Der lateinische Hymnus im Mittelalter: Überlieferung-Ästhetik-Ausstrahlung, ed. Andreas Haug, Monumenta Monodica Medii Aevi, Subsidia IV (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2004), 301-29

"Orality, Literacy, and the Early Notation of the Office Hymns," Journal of the American Musicological Society 56 (2003): 99-167

"A Lost Mozarabic Liturgical Manuscript Rediscovered: New York, Hispanic Society of America, B2916, olim Toledo, Biblioteca Capitular, 33.2," Traditio 57 (2002) 189-219

"Work and Play in Sacred Music and its Social Context, ca. 1050-1250," in The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History, ed. R.N. Swanson, Studies in Church History 37 (Woodbridge: Blackwell, 2002), 57-79

"Glosses on the Office Hymns in Eleventh-Century Continental Hymnaries," The Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001): 1-26

"Women's Performance of the Lyric before 1500," in Woman's Song: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Ann Marie Rasmussen and Anne Klinck (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 47-65

"Training for the Liturgy as a Form of Monastic Education," in Medieval Monastic Education, ed. Carolyn Muessig and George Ferzoco (Leicester, London, New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), 7-20

"Ricerche sul breviario di Santa Giulia (Brescia, Biblioteca Queriniana, ms H VI 21" (coauthored with Martina Pantarotto), Studi medievali 42 (2001): 301-318

"Liturgy and History at the Abbey of Farfa in the Late Eleventh Century: Hymns of Peter Damian and Other Additions to BAV Chigi C.VI.177," Sacris Erudiri 39 (2000): 253-280

"Eleventh-Century Continental Hymnaries Containing Latin Glosses," Scriptorium 53 (1999): 200-251

"The Sources and Significance of the Orpheus Myth in 'Musica Enchiriadis' and Regino of Prüm's 'Epistola de harmonica institutione'," Early Music History 18 (1999): 47-74

"Performative Exegesis in the Fleury Interfectio Puerorum," Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 29 (1998): 39-64

"The Liturgical Role of Children in Monastic Customaries from the Central Middle Ages," Studia Liturgica 28 (1998): 194-209

Contact Information

Office:

TBA