Peter Mondelli

Associate Professor, Music History
BA, Columbia University
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
MU-308

Peter Mondelli

Associate Professor and Area Coordinator, Music History

 

A specialist in nineteenth-century music, French opera, media history, and critical theory, Dr. Mondelli has served on UNT’s faculty since 2012. Originally from Washington, DC, he holds degrees from Columbia University (BA) and the University of Pennsylvania (PhD), and taught at the University of Delaware and West Chester University before moving to Denton.

 

Research

 

My published research falls into two broad categories:

  1. The impact of print and bourgeois capitalism on nineteenth-century French opera
  2. Oral song traditions and politics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe

Current and future research projects consider musical cosmopolitanism and translation, music studies and the posthumanities, music and technology in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Texas, among others.

 

Select publications:

  • Opera’s Objects: Print, Capital, and the Lyric Stage in Nineteenth-Century Paris (forthcoming)
  • “Singing Print, Reading Song: Navigating Voice and Writing in Herder’s Volkslieder,” in The German Quarterly vol. 91, no. 4 (2018): 377-388.
  • “Offenbach’s Bouffonnerie, Wagner’s Rêverie: The Materiality and Politics of the Ineffable in Second Empire Paris” in Opera Quarterly (2016)
  • “Parisian Opera between Commons and Commodity, ca. 1830,” in Consuming Music: Individuals, Institutions, Communities, 1730-1830, ed. Emily Green and Catherine Mayes (Rochester, 2017)
  • “The Phonocentric Politics of the French Revolution” in Acta Muscologica vol. 88, no. 2 (2016)
  • “The Sociability of History in French Grand Opera: A Historical Materialist Perspective” in 19th Century Music vol. 37, no. 1 (2013)

 

Recent conference presentations:

  • “A Goguette Assemblage: A Manuscript Chansonnier in an Age of Print” (2021)
  • “Richard Wagner, Maurice Schlesinger, and the Labor of Music Publishing” (2020)
  • “The Musical Canon as Capitalist Commodity: Outlining a 200-Year History” (2018)
  • “Rethinking Alienation through Music in Benjamin’s Paris” (2018)
  • “Music and the Posthuman: A Critical Reconsideration” (2017)
  • Der Freischütz, Robin des bois, and the Cosmopolitan Aesthetics of Translation” (2016)
  • “Censoring Rossini’s ‘musique facile’” (2016)
  • “Warfare and Opera as Spectacle in the Parisian Press, 1852-1870” (2016)

 

Teaching and Advising

 

I believe strongly that history classes (whether undergraduate or graduate) ought to emphasize not just what we know, but also how we know it. As such, I enjoy engaging with a wide range of sources, methods, and broader philosophical questions. As for topics, while my doctoral seminars tend to engage with my current research projects, my master’s and bachelor’s courses aspire to broader chronological and geographic coverage.

 

On occasion, I teach courses (especially opera-related courses) focused on questions of interpretation and contemporary criticism.

 

As an advisor, I welcome PhD, DMA, and MA students whose interests (either subject matter or approach) overlap with any of mine.

 

Service and Advocacy

 

I seek out service opportunities that allow me to advocate for equity and inclusivity in higher education. As a disabled scholar, I’m particularly interested in disability rights and access in academia.

View Dr. Mondelli's profile on the UNT Faculty Information System