Assistant Professor of Music

Originally from the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Dr. Abrahams holds a Ph.D. in music theory and cognition from Northwestern University, where her research focused on ritual music and embodied experience. She also holds a M.M. in music theory and cognition from Northwestern University and a B.M. in music theory from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.

Dr. Abrahams’s research is interdisciplinary, centering around analytical approaches to oral tradition musics and the integration of music analysis and ethnographic methods. She works primarily with embodied musical experiences in Jewish and Greek Orthodox liturgical settings, as well as studying embodiment in music theory pedagogy, music cognition, and music philosophy. Her published work can be found in the Analytical Approaches to World Music journal and is forthcoming in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and the edited collection, Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom. She is also co-authoring a new undergraduate music theory textbook, under contract and forthcoming with W.W. Norton, tentatively titled The Engaged Musician: Theory and Analysis for the 21st Century.

Dr. Abrahams has presented at conferences in the United States and abroad, including the Society for Music Theory, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Analytical Approaches to World Music International Conferences, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (US and Canada), the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, and “Magnified & Sanctified”: the first International Academic Conference on the Music of Jewish Prayer. She serves as an associate editor for the Analytical Approaches to World Music journal and as coordinator for the Jewish Musics Analysis Group.