M. (EJ) Eagen-Jones

Bio

M. (EJ) Eagen-Jones (they/them) is a musicologist whose research and teaching focus on pre-1650 European choral and vocal ensemble repertoire and pre-1650 Eurasian women’s musicking activities. Their secondary interests include twentieth-century modernism and music of the Irish diaspora.

Eagen-Jones’s 2016 dissertation explores psalm motets—the motet is a vocal ensemble genre—that circulated in mid-sixteenth-century Augsburg, Germany. A multi-religious center, Augsburg’s churches and schools collected motet books that could be used in both Catholic and Protestant centers. Eagen-Jones’s project asks what and how psalm texts are musically expressed, and how that expression speaks to composers’, singers’, and listeners’ religious sensibilities. Their two years of research in Munich and Augsburg were supported, in large part, by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) scholarships. Eagen-Jones’s continued interest in motets has led to national and international conference talks—including at the national gathering of the American Musicological Society and the International Musicological Society Congress.

Eagen-Jones’s article, “Saints, Heretics, and Humanist Poets” (2021) examines motet settings of exegetical texts. A current project is a critical edition of Erasmus Rotenbucher’s Bergkreyen—a 1551 Protestant pedagogical volume of two-voice works.

Eagen-Jones’s role as a Teaching Assistant Professor, coupled with a recent shift to administration have resulted in their increased focus on teaching and curricular design. In 2020–2021, they participated in a unit-wide task force that evaluated and made recommendations for an inclusive music core. More recently (2023) they developed and led a seminar on music history pedagogy; and they gave two talks on mentoring student writing in the age of generative AI—one for Music graduates, one for Association of Illinois Music Schools members.

Many of Eagen-Jones’s courses have been recognized as “excellent” on student evaluation forms. Two courses received “outstanding” reviews: MUS 313, “Music History I” and MUS 414 / MUS 522, “Women in Music, pre-1650.”