Bonnie Gordon

A music historian who works across disciplines and creative practices, Bonnie Gordon is a Professor at the University of Virginia. Her research and teaching focus on early modern music, Opera, gender, early America and community engagement. The author of numerous articles, two books and one co-edited essay collection, her most recent book Voice Machines: The Castrato the Cat Piano and Other Strange Sounds was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023. Monteverdi’s Unruly Women appeared in 2004 and The Courtesans Arts; a co-edited essay collection appeared in 2006 She is working on a third book called Syncopated Histories that centers the sounds of early America. She is a founding faculty member of the Equity Center at UVa and a co-director of the Sound Justice lab. She also co-directs Cville Tulips; a program that supports recently arrived Afghan women and children. In the music department she teaches classes on music history, noise, gender, race, and history as storytelling. She has also taught in the Engagements and the Pavilion Seminars and is affiliated faculty in Women and Gender studies as well as Jewish Studies. She is the recipient of a dissertation grant from the American Association of University Women, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. She has also been the Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. In addition to her scholarly writing, she has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate and the Cville weekly. She plays jazz, rock, and classical viola.