Biography
Associate Instructor Kate Altizer is a PhD candidate in Musicology at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she is writing her dissertation on human musical engagement with humpback whales, asking what it means to be a good listener across species (“Sirens, Monsters, Musicians: Humpback Whales, Human Culture, and Interspecies Musicality”). She taught music history and theory at both her almae matres and at IU has taught a graduate music history review course and undergraduate courses in film music and women musicians.
In 2018 Kate received the Lieber Memorial Teaching Associate Award, a university-wide honor that recognizes excellence in collegiate teaching by graduate students at IU. In collaboration with Professor Giovanni Zanovello she received a SoTL grant from the IU Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, and they have presented their pedagogical research at the IU Musicology Colloquium (2017) as well as at the 2018 Teaching Music History Conference. In 2017 Kate was a participant in the inaugural Animals & Society Summer Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. When she’s not teaching or writing, Kate enjoys taking sound walks around Bloomington with her lab mix, Gilda, and she is currently designing a course on nature and music for MGS.