Volume 1, No. 1 September 2003

CULTURAL CONTEXTS OF EXCLUSION:
WOMEN COLLEGE BAND DIRECTORS

Elizabeth S. Gould
Faculty of Music
University of Toronto

e.gould@utoronto.ca

Abstract

Despite gender affirmative employment practices, women constitute little more than 5% of all U.S. college band directors. Researchers have investigated this situation in terms of historical precedent, traditional socialization, discrimination, segregation, professional identity, and lack of role models. They have not, however, addressed the culture of conducting college bands. Cultural analysis is essential because the percentage of women conducting college bands in the U.S. has remained virtually static during the past thirty years. It is appropriate because it provides a multi-layered, broader view of the problem which make possible explanations that may be more appropriately generalized and less subject to essentialism. This project analyzes the paucity of women college band directors in terms of the cultural contexts in which they inhabit: the cultures of music, performance, and college bands. Reviewing and interpreting the literature related to these cultures, I use a perspective that takes into account the positionalities of individuals while also locating them in cultural and by implication, historical, contexts. Analysis (reading) creates a narrative in which I foreground what challenges dominant discourse in these cultures, and describe how they function in terms of women college band directors.

Article and References

About the Author

After receiving her Bachelor of Music degree from DePauw University, Elizabeth Gould worked as a freelance saxophonist and clarinetist for ten years. In addition to teaching classroom music and band at all levels from kindergarten through high school in Green River and Kemmerer, Wyoming, on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, and in New York City, Dr. Gould has served as Community Outreach Director for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Associate Director of the Michigan State University Community Music School, Performing Arts Series Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin Center-Marshfield/Wood County, and Arts Education Director for the Idaho Commission on the Arts.

With graduate degrees from the University of Wyoming (M.A), and the University of Oregon (DMA), Dr. Gould is currently serving as Visiting Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Toronto where she teaches courses in music education philosophy and foundations. Her research focuses on feminist issues in music education, and has been published in Philosophy of Music Education Review, College Music Symposium, and Update. She has been a member of the music education and conducting faculty of Boise State University since 1996, where she serves as Coordinator of Music Education and conductor of the BSU All-Campus Concert Band.