The Graduate Forum
an interdisciplinary forum at New York University
Jenny Olivia Johnson
Jenny Olivia Johnson is a composer and music scholar currently completing her Ph.D. in the Music department of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she is writing an interdisciplinary dissertation on sound, acoustic synaesthesia, and fragmented memories of childhood sexual abuse. Her compositions resonate crucially with her academic work, often telling stories of traumatic and/or life-altering events in repetitive and noise-based musical languages inspired directly by the non-linear narrative capabilities of poetry and film. Recent collaborations include performances of her experimental operas by New York City Opera, ICE, and Alarm Will Sound. In January 2008, Jenny will begin an extended artist residency at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, where she will compose her third short opera, a response piece to the stories of sexual abuse and music that she discusses in her dissertation.
Jenny's reflections on the Forum
"I joined the Graduate Forum because my dissertation project was shaping up to be an extremely interdisciplinary effort, drawing from such divergent fields as musicology, continental philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology. I knew that, in order to make my project tenable and intelligible to scholars outside of music, I needed to meet students in other departments with similar goals, and I also wanted some honest feedback and criticism of my project from people from a variety of different intellectual contexts. My experience in the Forum has far exceeded my expectations; I have not only gained invaluable insights about my work, but I have also gained a group of amazing friends, people I hope to know for the rest of my life. My colleagues' presentations in the Forum have each moved, challenged, and inspired me in a variety of different ways, and all of the impassioned discussions we have had about interdisciplinarity and the economy of knowledge have fundamentally changed the way that I think about the academy and my place within it."