Jennifer Fraser

(she/her/hers)

  • Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology

Areas of Study

Education

  • BA, University of Sydney, 1996
  • MA in ethnomusicology, Brown University, 1998
  • PhD in musicology, University of Illinois, 2007

Biography

Jennifer Fraser is a teacher-scholar, a locution that carries great significance for the way she thinks about teaching, scholarship, and the synergies between them. At Oberlin, she has taught a wide range of courses, including academic classes, performance, and those that are hybrid. Wherever possible, she centers experiential learning, whether that includes using archival materials, doing ethnography, or mounting an instrument exhibit. See, for example, the website she built with students: Sounding Decolonial Futures: Decentering Ethnomusicology’s Colonialist Legacies.

Her ethnographic research has historically focused on the music of the Minangkabau people in West Sumatra, Indonesia, in relation to issues of ethnicity, gender, Islam, and natural disasters. In recent years, however, her projects have taken her in radically different directions and involve the digital humanities, public ethnomusicology, community engagement, and collaborative scholarship. See, for example, the community music program Bang on a Gong.

Her latest project is a digital humanities site, Song in the Sumatran Highlands. The site is an interactive, interpretative, multimedia digital ethnography and archive that documents and celebrates saluang, a vocal genre from the highlands of West Sumatra, Indonesia.

  • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend 2020 
  • Research Status, Oberlin College, AY2020–21
  • Outstanding Community-based Learning Practitioner Award, Bonner Center for Service and Learning, Oberlin College, 2018. 
  • Research Status, Oberlin College, AY2010–11.
  • Teaching Excellence Award 2009–10. Oberlin College. 
  • International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (SSRC). 2003–2004.

  • with Gabriela Linares (OC December 20), “Reimagining the Representation of Ethnographic Knowledge: The Philosophy and Methodology of a Digital Humanities Project” Open Access Musicology. Accepted for publication in Vol 2, expected 2022. 
  • with Saiful Hadi, Gabriela Linares, Megan Mitchell, et. al. 2021. Song in the Sumatran Highlands. https://songinthesumatranhighlands.com/song-in-the-sumatran-highlands/index. 
  • with Saiful Hadi. “Singing ‘Naked’ Verses: Interactive Intimacies and Islamic Moralities in Saluang Performances in West Sumatra.” Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music, Edited by Christopher J. Miller and Andy McGraw. Expected 2022. 
  • with Karla Hubbard. 2021. “Natural” Disasters, Cultural Framings, and Resilience in Indonesia: Transdisciplinary Engagements in an Immersion Program. ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, 27(2), pp.30–42. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/ane.299
  • “The Sustainability and Evolution of Talempong: Pluralism in Minangkabau Gong Practices” Performing Indonesia, ed. by Sumarsam and Andy McGraw. Smithsonian Institution. Freer Occasional Paper Series, New Series, vol. 5, 2016. https://www.freersackler.si.edu/essays/article-fraser/
  • Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia. Research in International Studies. Southeast Asia Series, No. 127. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 2015. 
  • “Minangkabau/ West Sumatra, Indonesia” in The Ethnomusicologists’ Cookbook, Volume II : Complete Meals from Around the World, edited by Sean Williams, Taylor & Francis Group, 47-52, 2015.
  • “The Art of Grieving: West Sumatra’s Worst Earthquake in Music Videos.” Ethnomusicology Forum 22(2):129-159. 2013.
  • “Pop Song as Custom: Weddings, Entrepreneurs, and Ethnicity in West Sumatra.” Ethnomusicology 55(2):200-228. 2011.

Fall 2024

Music as Social Life — MUSY 103
Doing Musical Ethnography — MUSY 201
Musical Studies Honors I — CMUS 400
Javanese Gamelan — APST 748

Spring 2025

Introduction to Ethnomusicology — MUSY 100
Ethnomusicology as Activism — MUSY 303
Musical Studies Honors II — CMUS 401
Javanese Gamelan — APST 748

Notes

Jennifer Fraser presents at Society for Ethnomusicology conference

November 12, 2020

On October 23, 2020, Jennifer Fraser presented a paper titled “Teaching as Scholarship or, How My Students Have Made Me a Better Ethnomusicologist,” as part of a panel, “Ethnomusicology as a Liberal Art: Pedagogy, Disciplinarity, and Institutionalization at the Educational Crossroads” at the annual Society for Ethnomusicology conference. Fellow panelists included Jeffers Engelhardt at Amherst College, Morgan Luker at Reed College, and Whitney Slaten at Bard College. Several Oberlin alumni participated as part of the audience, including Alicia Lola Jones, faculty at Indiana University and Christian James, graduate student, at Indiana University. 

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