Current Chapter Officers
President: Virginia E. Whealton, Texas Tech University
Virginia E. Whealton is a musicologist and historian whose research addresses questions of music and identity in the long nineteenth century, often as they intersect with nationalism, geopolitical imagination, travel, and cultural memory. Her current book project, Urban Virginians, Musical Citizens: The Myers Family of Norfolk, investigates how a musically and culturally innovative urban life in the Old Dominion developed during the Early Republic vis-à-vis the mythos of Old Virginia and the Planter Class, and why urban Virginians’ cultural accomplishments have disturbed dominant narratives of Virginian and American identity for more than two centuries. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Texas Tech University and served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society from 2020–2024.
Secretary: Sarah M. Lucas, Collin College
Dr. Randy Kinnett is a musicologist living in rural northeastern Collin County, TX. He is currently Professor of Music at Collin College, Frisco Campus, where he teaches music history and music theory. Kinnett holds a Ph.D. and M.M. in Musicology from the University of North Texas and a B.M. in Music Theory from Furman University. His research interests include the music of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the works of Gustav Mahler, and—most recently—the history of music in Dallas, Texas, in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Kinnett’s current work examines the Dallas Municipal Music Commission (1919-1924), the individuals and institutions associated with it, and its historical context.
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
- Brian Anderson is Senior Lecturer of Music History Pedagogy at the University of North Texas, where he teaches undergraduate music history and pedagogy courses serving 300 to 500 students each semester. He earned a Ph.D. in Musicology with a related field in Music Theory from UNT and holds degrees in musicology, music education, and mathematics from Kansas State University. Anderson is in his second year as co-leader of UNT’s Community of Practice on Artificial Intelligence in Education, supporting faculty engagement with emerging technologies in teaching and learning.
Student Representative: Júlia Coelho, University of North Texas, 2024-2026
Júlia Coelho completed her Doctorate in Musical Arts in Vocal Performance at the University of North Texas, where she is finishing her Musicology Ph.D. degree (2025, Early Music and Music Theory related fields) with a dissertation entitled “Representations of Disability as Otherness in 17th-Century Venetian Opera.” She has degrees in Musicology, Opera, and Philosophy from US, Italy, and Portugal, and had previously served for two years as the journal editor of Harmonia at UNT through GAMuT. Currently, she works as a Teaching Fellow for the UNT MHTE division and as a music history adjunct faculty at UNT Frisco.
As a scholar, her research ranges from 13th-century Portuguese-Galician to 16th-18th-century vocal music and the relationship of music and rhetoric, history of music theory, music and gender, and history of disability in medical, literary, and musical representations. On these topics, she published journal articles, book reviews, annotated translations, book chapters, and the book translation of Cerone and Schonsleder Musical Interpretation of Text in Vocal Polyphony (2018).
As she embraces scholar-performance, she is also an active musician, performing regularly medieval, baroque, new, and folk music, and has recorded several music projects as a soprano, Gothic harp player, and poetess, including her upcoming album funded by the Presser Foundation set to her poetry and voice, O Tempo fora do Tempo.
Student Representative: Anna Marinela Lopez, 2025-2027
Anna Marinela Lopez is a PhD student in Historical Musicology at the University of Texas at Austin whose research lies at the intersection of nationalism, sound studies, and film music theories to explore U.S. American identity formation through music in popular media. Her dissertation analyzes sonic markers of U.S. American identity through live music ensembles at the Disneyland Resort. She was awarded the 2022 Outstanding Graduate Student Scholarly Creative Activities and Research Award for her master’s thesis “David Maslanka’s Symphony No. 4 and the Wind Band/Ensemble as an American Institution.”
Her other research interests include American wind bands/ensembles, film music, popular music, and musical theater which she has presented at numerous conferences both nationally and internationally: American Musicological Society, the Grainger Symposium, Society for American Music, Music and Moving Image, All Ears: Music and Sound in and Beyond Disney Theme Parks, and the Asian Classical Music Initiative International Conference.
She has held several leadership positions in the Association of Graduate Ethno/Musicology Students (AGEMS) at UT Austin including Co-President (Historical Musicology) and Colloquium Representative (Historical Musicology). She also served as the Assistant Editor of the Journal of the Society for American Music from 2023-2025.
She completed her master’s degree in Music History and Literature from California State University, Fullerton (2022), where she also obtained a bachelor’s degree in Flute Performance (2020).
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
Sarah Lewis, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, 2024-2026
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
Webmaster
Drew Stephen, UT San Antonio
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
Andrea Kate Klassen, University of Texas at Austin, 2023-2025
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