Research in Music Series: A Talk by Jeffers Engelhardt
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 @ 11 AM, Bromery Room 419 (Arts Bridge)
Research in Music Series: A Talk by Jeffers Engelhardt
Professor of Music at Amherst College
Title of talk: Music Studies’ Postsecular Turn
Abstract: This talk emerges from Music and Religion, my forthcoming book in Oxford University Press’s Theory in Ethnomusicology series. Moving between the history of (ethno)musicology, anthropology, and religious studies, I share a story of music studies emerging from religious writing into a secular, social-scientific, culturalist field and, more recently, into a field that accommodates work we can call postsecular. I will highlight two aspects of music studies’ postsecular turn: its recognition of other-than-human agency and its decolonizing promise.
Jeffers Engelhardt is the Karen and Brian Conway ’80, P’18 Presidential Teaching Professor of Music at Amherst College, where he is affiliated with the department of religion and programs in film and media studies and European studies. He researches the relationship of music, religion, secularity, and media; music and voice in Estonian culture and society; and music in Europe and the Finno-Ugric world. His current book project is Music and Religion (Oxford University Press). His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and Fulbright-Hays and Woodrow Wilson Foundation fellowships. Jeffers Engelhardt holds a BM in Piano from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (1998) and an MA (2000) and PhD (2005) in Ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago. Since 2016, he has served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Music and Religion.
At Amherst College, Jeffers Engelhardt teaches courses in ethnomusicology and the anthropology of music; community-based ethnography (Soundscapes of the Connecticut River Valley); music and religion; musicianship; and sound studies. He is affiliated with the Five College Ethnomusicology Certificate Program.