Music Professor Robert Walser is having a prolific Spring term, winning three fellowships with a total worth of more than $50,000 and an award for an article he wrote on popular American music.
Walser, who specializes in popular music, was recently given $30,000 from the National Endowment for Humanities, $20,000 from the American Council of Learned Societies and $4,400 from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation.
The NEH and ACLS fellowships are two of the three most prestigious awards offered for work in the humanities, said Christian Wolff, chair of the music department. The third is the Guggenheim fellowship.
Walser said he plans to take a year off from teaching and to use the money from the NEH fellowship to research and to write a book on a series of case studies of American music and the critical methods that are associated with it. Jazz, rap, polka and classical are a few of the music categories that will be examined.
Walser had to turn down the ACLS fellowship because its award period conflicted with the NEH fellowship.
Wolff said the selection process is "very competitive" and it is quite an honor to be chosen.
This was the first time Walser applied for either award.
The Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship will fund Walser's travel and research associated with the collection of readings in jazz history he plans to write.
Walser was also awarded the 1994 Irving Lowens Award for the best scholarly article on American music. His prize-winning essay, titled "Eruptions: Heavy Metal Appropriations of Classical Virtuosity," discussed the connections between heavy metal and classical music.
Walser was particularly excited about the awards he received because the field of popular music has not always been taken or studied seriously. He said the awards are "an important outside validation."
Walser has been at Dartmouth for three years. He did his graduate work at the University of Minnesota, studying musicology and musical performance, and then spent a year teaching at the University of Michigan before coming to Hanover.
In addition to studying music, Walser is a musician himself, specializing in classical, jazz trumpet and rock-n-roll. He has also written a book on popular music titled "Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music."
At the end of this school year, Walser will leave Dartmouth to begin research for his fellowships and then will go to the University of California at Los Angeles, where he will be a music professor.
Walser said he is leaving because his wife recently received a job at UCLA as well and that Los Angeles will be more conducive to his study in popular music.
