Faculty Notes | Sean Williams | 2023-2024
Sean Williams was an invited speaker on the subject of food and music at a conference on food and culture at UC Davis in October. She received the 2023 award for best article in the field of ethnomusicology for her publication titled “Poetry Writing as Transgressive Ethnography” (published in Ethnomusicology 66/3: 361-378) at the annual Society for Ethnomusicology conference in Ottawa in November, where she also gave a presentation on the links between musical autobiographies and temporary awareness among dementia patients. She also presented an invited talk titled “Song, Food, and Longing in Irish America” in Washington, D.C. at the residence of the Irish Ambassador to the United States—Geraldine Byrne Nason—in February. She served as a keynote speaker at the 40th anniversary of the death of her Irish singing teacher, Joe Heaney, at a festival in Connemara, Ireland in May. She currently has five articles in various stages of publication: “Vernacular Catholicism in Ireland: The Keening Woman” (Religions Journal); “From DeAnglicization to Riverdance: Irish Revivals in Music and Dance” (Irish Revivals [Cambridge]); “Excellent in Point of both Music and Words: The Music of Keening” (The Oxford Handbook of Irish Song); “World Music” (The Oxford Handbook of Musical Biography); and “From Singing to Speaking: A Song-Based Irish-Language Pedagogy” (Ethnomusicology Forum). Lastly, her ninth book—Music at the Threshold: From the Sacred to the Dangerous—is under contract with Oxford University Press, has been through the first round of revisions, and is expected to go to press in 2025.
