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Postdoctoral Fellow 2007-2008, University of Guelph

University of California, San Diego

Tracy earned her Ph.D. in Critical Studies/Experimental Practices from the University of California, San Diego in 2007. Her dissertation examined the connection between the staging of musical ensembles and the desire for a coherent identity. As a post-doctoral fellow she is developing the idea of an “improvisative” as a point of difference within the performative. Her publications include articles in Current Musicology, Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, and the Encyclopedia of African American Music. She is also a jazz saxophonist and has performed with David Borgo, Anthony Davis, Mark Dresser, George Lewis, Dana Reason, and others, and can be heard on the Cadence Jazz label.

...the innovative working models of improvisation developed by creative practitioners have helped to promote a dynamic exchange of cultural forms, and to encourage new, socially responsive forms of community building across national, cultural, and artistic boundaries.

– Ajay Heble