Current Chapter Officers
President: Virginia E. Whealton, Texas Tech University
Virginia E. Whealton is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at Texas Tech University. A specialist in nineteenth-century music, her research focuses on two areas: 1) Parisian music, specifically on Romantic musicians’ travel writings and travel-inspired compositions, and their role in shaping musicians’ public image; and 2) musical life and collectorship in early nineteenth-century Norfolk, Virginia.
Currently she is pursuing a book project provisionally entitled At the Helm of the New Republic: The Myers Family and Musical Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Norfolk, Virginia. A fervent advocate of public musicology, she is collaborating with the Chrysler Museum of Art and the Moses Myers House Museum as she conducts this research.
Her writing and archival work have been supported by a series of grants, including a Mellon Innovating International Research and Teaching Fellowship, a Bartlet Grant from the American Musicological Society, and a Pulaski grant from the American Council for Polish Culture. Recent publications include “Franz Liszt’s Album d’un voyager: Music, Memorials, and the Anthropocene” in Nineteenth-Century Contexts (2019), and “Transformed Abruzzi: Harold en Italie, The Récit de voyage, and French Romantic Visual Culture” in Symphonism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Brepols, 2019).
She holds a PhD and an MA in Musicology from Indiana University—Bloomington, and a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from Houghton College.
Secretary: Sarah M. Lucas, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Sarah M. Lucas is a Lecturer of Music History, Music Theory, and Ear Training at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She completed her doctoral studies in musicology at the University of Iowa. Her dissertation, “Fritz Reiner and the Legacy of Béla Bartók’s Orchestral Music in the United States,” is based on archival research carried out in the U.S. and in Hungary, where she conducted research at the Budapest Bartók Archives with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship in affiliation with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her master’s work in music history at the University of Missouri culminated in her thesis “Béla Bartók and the Pro-Musica Society: A Chronicle of Piano Recitals in Eleven American Cities during his 1927-1928 Tour.” Her undergraduate studies in music education at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri also included independent studies in Baroque ornamentation and oboe. Lucas is currently carrying out further research on Bartók and Reiner with the support of an American Philosophical Society Franklin Grant. She regularly presents her research at regional, national, and international conferences and has published articles in journals such as Magyar Zene [Hungarian Music] and Hungarian Cultural Studies. Most recently she has contributed to content guides for the Nineteenth-Century materials of the A-R Music Anthology. In conjunction with her interests in Hungarian music, Lucas is an active member of the American Hungarian Educators Association and serves as a co-chair of their Music and Folklore committee.
Treasurer: Kimberly Hieb, West Texas A&M University
Dr. Kimberly Hieb currently serves as Associate Professor of Music History and the Director of Graduate Studies at West Texas A&M University’s School of Music in Canyon, Texas, which is located just south of Amarillo in the heart of the Texas Panhandle. There she teaches undergraduate music history as well as topical seminars and research methods courses for graduate students. As a public musicologist, she hosts pre-concert talks for the Amarillo Symphony, Chamber Music Amarillo, and a weekly radio show on High Plains Public Radio featuring recordings of local performances. Her research interests include sacred music in seventeenth-century Salzburg, music history pedagogy, and American music with a focus on the activities of symphonies and women’s music clubs located in the more rural areas of the country.
Website: J. Drew Stephen, University of Texas at San Antonio
Drew Stephen holds degrees from the University of Western Ontario, the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, and the University of Toronto. Although his main research addresses the cultural meanings of the hunt in nineteenth-century opera, his publications and presentations cover a wide range of topics including the history of the horn, brass instrument performance practices, Canadian music, music in fantasy film, and Jewish music in Renaissance Italy. In addition to his academic pursuits, Drew is an accomplished performer on both modern and natural horns. He has held positions with the Orchestra of the Landesbuhnen Sachsen (now the Elbland Philharmonie) in Dresden , Germany, the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, and the Kingston Symphony Association in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He continues his performing activities as a member of the Symphony of the Hills and as principal horn of the Austin Baroque Orchestra and plays regularly with period instrument ensembles in the region including Sonido Barroco San Antonio and Ars Lyrica Houston.
Drew is the co-director of the COLFA Semester in Urbino study abroad program in Urbino, Italy and the 2019 recipient of the Richard S. Howe Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award and the 2021 recipient of the President’s Distinguished Award for Teaching Excellence.
Student Representative: Júlia Coelho, University of North Texas, 2024-2026
Júlia Coelho has recently completed a D.M.A. at the University of North Texas, where she is finishing her Musicology Ph.D. degree (2025, Early Music and Music Theory related fields) and works as a Teaching Fellow for the MHTE division.
At UNT, she has previously served as the Harmonia journal editor and Musicology student representative in GAMuT, as well as a Music Senator in the Graduate Student Council, and co-chair and international student representative for the DVS Student Advisory Council. She has articles, reviews, translations, and annotated translations in English, Portuguese, and Italian, and has presented her research in the US and across Europe, with topics ranging from music and disability, music and politics, 16th-17th-century German music and rhetoric, 17th-century Italian opera, and 18th-century Luso-Brazilian music.
Student Representative: Andrea Kate Klassen, 2023-2025
Andrea Klassen is a doctoral student in Musicology at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in medieval plainchant, with an interest in posthumanist critical theory. Andrea holds an MA in Musicology from Dalhousie University and a BMus in Music History at University of Manitoba. Her research revolves around notation and liturgy, with her most recent project being a notational and liturgical analysis of the manuscript Vol 39, which she presented at AMS-SW virtually in Spring 2022. Prior to that, Andrea completed a notational and melodic analysis of the melismas of the alleluias in the St Gall Cantatorium as her MA thesis, which she presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in 2021. In Spring 2022 Andrea held a fellowship through the Harry Ransom Center to index HRC 21, a Dominican processional, for the Cantus Database, and presented this research at the Skills and Resources for Early Musics Study Group at AMS in New Orleans.
Andrea currently holds a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for her doctoral studies. For her dissertation, she plans to research neo-Gregorian chant throughout Europe to determine paths of transmission, with an emphasis on both the repertory and the notation.
Past Chapter Officers
President
Megan Sarno, University of Texas at Arlington, 2023-2024
Kevin Salfen, University of the Incarnate Word, 2019-2023
Nico Schuler, Texas State University, 2016-2019
Sheryl Murphy-Manley, Sam Houston State University, 2015-2016
Christopher J. Smith, Texas Tech University, 2011-2015
Paul Bertagnolli, University of Houston, 2007-2011
Carl Leafstedt, Trinity University, 2005-2007
Andrew Dell’Antonio, University of Texas at Austin, 2003-2005
Yvonne Kendall, University of Houston-Downtown, 2001-2003
Honey Meconi, Rice University, 1999-2001
R. Allen Lott, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1997-1999
Secretary-Treasurer
Virginia E. Whealton, Texas Tech University, 2020-2024
Kevin E. Mooney, Texas State University, 2016-2020
Nico Schüler, Texas State University, 2012-2016
Sheryl Murphy-Manley, Sam Houston State University, 2008-2012
Gregory Straughn, Abilene Christian University, 2004-2008
Kimberlyn Montford, Trinity University, 2002-2004
Jean Marie Hellner, University of North Texas, 2000-2002
Michael Dodds, Southern Methodist University, 2000-2002
Managing Editor, Proceedings
Sheryl Murphy Manley, Sam Houston State University, 2012-2017
Chapter Representative
Sarah M. Lucas, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, 2021-2024
Kendra Leonard, Silent Film and Music Archive, 2017-2021
Kevin Salfen, University of the Incarnate Work, 2010-2017
Kimberlyn Montford, Trinity University, 2004-2010
Matthew Dirst, University of Houston, 2001-2003
Student Representative
Jacob Collins, University of North Texas, 2022-2024
Hannah Neuhauser, University of Texas at Austin, 2021-2023
Peter Kohanski, University of North Texas, 2020-2022
Brian Anderson, University of North Texas, 2019-2021
Peng Liu, University of Texas at Austin, 2018-2020
Emily Hagen, University of North Texas, 2017-2019
Xuan Qin University of Texas at Austin, 2016-2018
Jessica Stearns, University of North Texas. 2015-2017
Yu Ye, University of Texas at Austin, 2014-2016
Bethany McLemore, University of Texas at Austin, 2013-2015
Jonathan Sauceda, University of North Texas, 2012-2014
Andrea Recek, University of North Texas, 2011-2013
Jane Mathieu, University of Texas at Austin, 2010-2012
Candice L Aipperspach, Texas Tech University, 2009-2011
Randy Kinnett, University of North Texas, 2008-2010
Ryan Kangas, The University of Texas at Austin, 2007-2009
Jesús A. Ramos-Kittrell, The University of Texas at Austin, 2004-2006
Rebecca Ringer, University of North Texas, 2002-2004
Sarah Reichardt, University of Texas at Austin, 2001-2003