The passion Julie McQuinn brings to her work is unmistakable. The winner of the Young Teacher Award in 2006-07, the musicologist and assistant professor of music joined the faculty of the Conservatory of Music in 2003, teaching courses on the history of music, music and gender, opera, and “borrowed music” in the movies.
“My goal is to raise consciousness that music has meaning; that it is an active, living discourse that changes through time,” McQuinn says. Whether it’s taking a fresh look at the meaning of music in apparently innocent fairy tales from Cinderella to Shrek, or the chilling film, A Clockwork Orange, McQuinn teaches that music communicates ideas, often in subversive ways. Films, she says, have the power to change the identity of a particular piece of borrowed music.
While musicology courses are a requirement for music majors, students from all disciplines are finding McQuinn’s classes appealing. “I seek to find new ways to challenge and engage students,” she says. In presenting the Young Teacher Award to McQuinn earlier this year, Lawrence University President Jill Beck praised McQuinn’s “legendary” ability to create an exciting environment for learning, and cited her enthusiasm for teaching, which “makes the material leap off the pages of books and scores and into the hearts and minds of students.”
In March 2007, McQuinn presented a paper, “Identity Under Construction: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings in The Elephant Man and Lorenzo’s Oil,” to the National Association for Humanities Education Conference in San Francisco.
Prior to Lawrence, McQuinn taught at Northwestern University and Elmhurst College. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree in voice performance and a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Oberlin College. She also holds a master’s degree in voice performance from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and earned her Ph.D. in musicology from Northwestern University.
Above, with McQuinn, is her Newfoundland, Mika.
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