Tonia Passwater, Ph.D.
Department of Music, Theater, and Dance
College of Arts and Sciences
Education
Ph.D. in Musicology, CUNY Graduate Center
M.M. in Clarinet Performance, Brooklyn College
B.M. in Music Performance, Jacksonville University
About Tonia
Tonia Passwater is a musicologist and clarinetist who recently defended her dissertation on the reception of music by American women modernist composers at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She also holds an M.M. in Clarinet Performance from Brooklyn College and a B.M. in Music Performance from Jacksonville University. Before coming to the University of New Haven, she taught music history and theory courses at William Paterson University, Hamilton College, and Lehman College.
Her research interests include American popular music, American women musicians and composers, reception history, musical modernism, the intersections of gender and social class in American musics and identities, and portrayals of music and musicians in literary works. In her teaching, she is dedicated to the creation of a culturally responsive curriculum that gives underrepresented musicians their rightful place in the standard histories of American and Western musics. As a musicologist and performer, she recognizes the importance of integrating music history and theory with performance studies and hopes to instill her students with an understanding of the ways in which history, theory, and performance work together to create more well-rounded musicians and listeners.