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, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Sarah M. Lucas serves as Assistant Professor of Musicology 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 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-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
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