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Josephine Wright

Professor of Music

Josephine Wright, music history and literature. Professor of Music and The Josephine Lincoln Morris Professor of Black Studies, appointed 1981. B.Mus., University of Missouri; M.Mus., Pius XII Academy, Italy; M.A., University of Missouri; Ph.D. in Musicology, New York University. Taught previously for five years at Harvard University and at York College of the City University of New York. From 1979 to 1990, editor of New Music for The Black Perspective in Music. Published articles and reviews have appeared in American Music, The Black Perspective in Music, Black Music Research Newsletter, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Notes, and Women's Studies Quarterly. Editor of Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780): An Early African Composer in England (Garland Press, 1981); co-author with Eileen Southern of African-American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale, and Dance: An Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1990). Co-author with Eileen Southern of Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture, 1770s-1920s (Garland Publishing, 2000). Principal editor of New Perspectives in Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern (Harmonie Park Press, 1991). Served as music consultant for documentary film, The Mass. 54th (a black Civil War Regiment on which the story for the film Glory is based), which aired nationally on PBS-TV in 1991. Also consultant on documentary on Stephen Foster for WITF-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which aired nationally in April 2000 with televised interview of Dr. Wright. Editor of the quarterly refereed journal American Music for 1993-97. Former editor of Garland Publishing's new Music in African American Culture series (1995-2000). Appointed a member of the National Artistic Directorate, Hall of Fame of American Classical Music in Cincinnati. From 1998 to November 2000, she served as an elected Director-at-Large of the American Musicological Society, and she now serves in a similar capacity as an elected board member of the Society for American Music. In April 2002, she was invited by President George W. Bush to participate in the National Humanities Awards in Washington, D.C. as a stand-in for her long-time mentor, Eileen Southern. She received the Distinguished Alumna Award, College of Arts and Science, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999.