At the recent joint American Musicological Society/Society for Music Theory conference in Denver, multiple discussions were held regarding Public Music Theory and Musicology and what is required to develop more inclusive and wide-reaching forms of music scholarship. These discussions followed numerous recent publications on the topic, such as The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory (2021), which center around scholarly community engagement and outreach and spaces where music scholarship has thrived outside of academia. To further engage with these ideas, this issue of SMR asks questions such as: How can music scholars encourage a collaborative and public environment for music research? What are some potential ways music scholarship could change when shifted to the public locale? What benefits can we imagine for our work when our audience is a general public, as opposed to the scholars in our fields?
Article: “Tuning the Mind: Nurturing World Musical Competence in University” by Sunhong Kim
Podcast 1: Scholarly Music Podcasts: A Conversation with Megan Lyons, William Robin, and Jennifer Weaver
Podcast 2: Public Music Scholarship and Alternative Academia: A Conversation with Clay Conley and Eric Whitmer
Editorial Team: Emma Beachy, Michaela Franzen, Cecilia Hiros, Kelly Hoppenjans, Tom Ingram, Yiqing Ma, Anna-Rose Nelson, Mayna Tyrrell