Annegret Fauser, an award-winning musicologist and faculty member in UNC-Chapel Hill’s music department since 2001, has been named the Harold J. Glass USAF Faculty Mentor/Graduate Fellow Distinguished Term Professor.
The three-year professorship, established within The Graduate School, includes a corresponding fellowship for a graduate student the professor selects to mentor. Fauser chose Jennifer Walker, a doctoral student in musicology, to serve as the 2017-18 fellow. The fellowship will be offered to a different student each of the three years.
Harold E. and Holly Glass provided the gift to establish the professorship, which they named in memory of Harold E. Glass’s father and of his service in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. A UNC-Chapel Hill doctoral graduate in political science, Harold E. Glass is a member of The Graduate School’s Graduate Education Advancement Board.
The faculty member selected for the professorship receives a stipend and research fund for three years. The graduate student selected for the fellowship receives a competitive stipend, full tuition, fees and health insurance. The professorship is intended to support and celebrate the unique and important relationship between faculty advisers and the students they mentor, said Steve Matson, dean of The Graduate School.
Fauser’s work focuses on the social, political and artistic contexts of music, particularly in France and in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Her book Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World War II received the American Musicological Society’s Music in American Culture Award and the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Print, Broadcast and New Media Coverage of Music.
She was awarded the 2011 Edward J. Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association (RMA) for her substantial body of distinguished work. The RMA is the United Kingdom’s most prominent society dedicated to the study of music.
Fauser, who also is the Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Music, has served as dissertation adviser for 13 doctoral students, including Walker. She has served as a member of the dissertation committee for 27 additional doctoral students at Carolina.
“Dr. Fauser demonstrates a tremendous commitment to graduate students at Carolina and is an exceptional mentor,” said Matson. “She has advised students on their honors theses, master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. Their success and accomplishments are very important to her, and we believe she epitomizes the spirit of the Glass Distinguished Professorship. We also commend Jennifer on her much-deserved fellowship.”
Fauser said that the award of this professorship is a tremendous honor. “There are so many outstanding graduate mentors at this university, and it is humbling that I have been recognized as one among them through this unique appointment. I am so proud of my students’ accomplishments, and I understand this award as honoring them as much as me.”
She added that Walker, the 2017-18 fellow, has conducted outstanding research in the libraries and archives of Paris. Walker’s research centers on the ways religion, politics and music intersected during the final decades of 19th-century France. Her dissertation argues that music was the ideal medium through which Catholicism was reintegrated into Republican identity.
“Being a Glass Fellow is invaluable to my research and writing,” said Walker. “Aside from the practical benefits of having the opportunity to focus exclusively on writing, the privilege of working alongside Professor Fauser as a mentor will impact my future years as a scholar for years to come. Her always impeccable guidance and her unwavering support of her students has already influenced me tremendously, and I could not think of anyone more deserving of this honor than her.”
