Sharon J. Harris

This past week we have had our second fellow! Sharon J. Harris, a PhD Candidate in English at Fordham University. Her dissertation examines the interdependent ways that music moves its hearers affectively, rhetorically, and physically in seventeenth-century English literature and how music’s power to move thus ultimately forms communities. She holds degrees in music and humanities from Brigham Young University and the University of Chicago and has an article appearing in the upcoming issue of Mormon Studies Review. For her research Sharon has received grants to the Folger Shakespeare Library, Yale Beinecke Library, UCLA Clark Library, and Digital Humanities Summer Institute. Sharon is the founder of Fordham University’s Music and Sound Studies reading group and blog and helps organize Fordham University's semi-annual Voices Up! concert series directed by Lawrence Kramer. She has also worked on the editorial staff of 19th-Century Music, published by UC Press and Opera Quarterly, published by Oxford Journals.

Janice was an accomplished pianist and Organist and generally loved music and singing. She made sure to teach all of her children to love and appreciate their skill in piano and singing. This fellowship provided accommodation for Sharon to attend The 2017 Historical Notation Bootcamp at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Janice would have been elated to have supported Sharon in her pursuit of this specialized musical talent, and would have wanted to know everything about what Sharon was learning. Thank you Sharon for applying and participating in the fellowship, and pursuing your passion for music! We look forward to seeing Sharon's reflections on her experience at the bootcamp.

The 2017 Historical Notation Bootcamp at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is co-sponsored by Yale University and Cornell University and directed by Andrew Hicks and Anna Zayaruznaya. In its second year it is already drawing scholars from around the country and generating international interest. The bootcamp is part seminar and part workshop, offering a primer in the theoretical grounding and practical know-how of medieval musical notations, from neumes to early print sources. Participants receive instruction in skills needed for work with musical sources, source-based analysis, and for singing from original notation.