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Complete these steps before you reach out to a faculty member!
- Familiarize yourself with program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit the graduate degree program listing and program-specific websites.
- Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study. This is either indicated in the program profile under "Admission Information & Requirements" - "Prepare Application" - "Supervision" or on the program website.
- Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
- Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
- Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department.
- Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.
- Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
- Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
- Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
- Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department. The supervision enquiry form guides you with targeted questions. Ensure to craft compelling answers to these questions.
- Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to pique someone’s interest.
- Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research:
- Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program.
- Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting.
- Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.
G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.
ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.
Supervision Enquiry
Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision
Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.
In the modern symphony orchestra, it is common practice for the musicians to tune to the principal oboist’s note A– known as the “tuning-A”– at the beginning of a concert. Although tuning the orchestra is widely accepted by orchestral musicians and audiences as an important part of the oboist’s job, there is a lack of academic research on the practice. We do not yet have a clear understanding of why the oboist gives the tuning-A– a practice whose origins Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes call a “mystery” in their well-researched history of the instrument, The Oboe (2004). Further, because the practical knowledge required to successfully play the A has mainly been passed aurally from oboist to oboist, there is little written documentation of the practice. In this dissertation, I begin to document the oboist’s relationship to the orchestral tuning-A from three different perspectives. In Chapter One, using primary historical sources from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, I trace the emergence of the oboist as the orchestral tuner around 1800 in Paris and the continued debates surrounding the oboe’s suitability for tuning into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Chapter Two, I discuss the findings of my original online survey of practicing principal oboists in Canadian professional orchestras, including evidence that oboists see the tuning-A not only as a practical tool, but as an expressive solo. I also address possible reasons for the oboe’s continued role in modern orchestral tuning, including the instrument’s unique timbre and oboists’ ability to adjust pitch. In Chapter Three, I present my analysis of the first movement of acclaimed American composer John Corigliano’s (1938- ) Oboe Concerto (1975), called “Tuning Game,” which the composer describes as “an extension of the preperformance tuning rite into a virtuosic game.” Using Hepokoski and Darcy’s Sonata Theory (2006) as a starting point, my original analysis shows the ingenuity of Corigliano’s use of the tuning-A as a defining compositional feature of “Tuning Game”—a perspective that no scholar has contributed before. Ultimately, I argue that the oboist’s tuning-A is a musical object with rich aesthetic value.
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This dissertation is a comprehensive examination of the use of the sostenuto pedal by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) in the first Appendix of his edition of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (1894) and Mit Anwendung des III. Pedals (Steinway & Sons Sustaining-Pedal) (1923). Although Busoni notated the use of the sostenuto pedal in these two works, scholars have largely overlooked the significance of his groundbreaking pedalling techniques. To contextualize the historical significance of Busoni’s use of the sostenuto pedal in the history of the piano repertoire, I analyze the use of the sostenuto pedal in Consolation No. 3 and Danse des Sylphes by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), for Liszt was the only major composer who notated his use of the sostenuto pedal before Busoni. I then use these findings to discuss Busoni’s first Appendix and Mit Anwendung des III. Pedals (Steinway & Sons Sustaining-Pedal), which represent Busoni’s extensive use of the sostenuto pedal but has not been discussed fully in scholarly literature. To illustrate Busoni’s impact, I demonstrate that his use of the sostenuto pedal pre-dated similar pedalling techniques employed by twentieth-century composers, including Percy Grainger (1882-1961), Luciano Berio (1925-2003), and George Crumb (1929-). My research findings provide a contextualized explanation of Busoni’s pedalling techniques and identify his contributions to the development of piano playing. Grounded in the most up-to-date and authoritative research, I show that Busoni found new ways to prolong and release tones by using the sostenuto pedal. He developed the use of the sostenuto pedal from merely prolonging a pedal point, as Liszt did, to devising four new pedalling techniques: 1) he altered the customary sequence of sound production of the piano: attack, sustain, and release; 2) he enabled the performance of contrasting articulations and dynamics in multi-layered textures; 3) he prolonged pedal points and increased the clarity of individual layers within multi-layered textures; 4) he formed polychords. Busoni’s use of the sostenuto pedal, I argue, expanded the pedalling technique of the piano.
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Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
Cantonese opera once flourished in early twentieth-century North America, sustaining numerous theatres and gaining prominence beyond Chinese borders. Scholarship has emerged in recent decades, focusing on the genre’s rise from a rural tradition to transpacific phenomenon. Particularly noteworthy is Nancy Rao’s framework of a transpacific, musical migration network spanning across North and South American port cities in the early twentieth century. While Rao presents a broad framework in her 2017 book, there have been few published scholarly works providing an in-depth examination of Cantonese opera’s multifaceted role in British Columbia’s localized conditions. Rao’s discussion is also limited to the period between the mid-nineteenth century and 1920s. To date, few scholars have engaged exclusively with the genre in its early twentieth-century, British Columbian context in Canada when Chinese communities faced structural discrimination. I further Rao’s research in the Vancouver and Victoria context by analyzing Cantonese opera’s reception history, print and material culture in the 1920s and 1930s. I systematically examine the Chinese Times, a Chinese newspaper published daily in Vancouver from 1914 to 1992. The newspaper encapsulates the genre’s reception history and Vancouver and Victoria Chinatown communities’ attitudes toward social issues that no one has analyzed methodically. In Chapter Two, I examine the 1920s issues of the newspaper because the decade saw the proposal and passing of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act (also known as Chinese Exclusion Act) in Canada, which stopped virtually all Chinese immigration. I argue that Cantonese opera theatres in 1920s Vancouver significantly contributed to the sustaining of the Chinatown community by collaborating in charity initiatives and aiding local and global Chinese communities, such as those in Japan and Mandarin-speaking Northern China. In Chapter Three, I review the 1930s as Chinatown residents faced the Great Depression occurring from 1929-1939. I argue that the decade was characterized by a quiet professional Cantonese opera scene but the rise of amateur performances and organizations sustained Vancouver and Victoria’s Chinatown communities. This thesis provides an anti-victimizing view of Chinatown communities in early twentieth-century British Columbia, where Cantonese opera played a significant sociopolitical role and facilitated Chinatown community formation against legalized racism.
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In this thesis, I offer an intersectional study of Brenda Fassie (1964-2004), a leading popular musician in South Africa in the 1980s to early-2000s. Previous studies have focused separately on aspects of race, gender, sexuality and politics in her life and music in apartheid and post-apartheid years. This study looks at multiple aspects of her identity and develops a critical approach that intertwines them.Fassie was a popular musician who grew up during the racial segregation of apartheid (1948-1990s) and both witnessed and participated in the birth of South African democracy (1994). As a black and queer woman, Fassie’s identity deeply impacted the way she produced her music and how it was received by audiences and critics. A discussion of three songs, “Weekend Special” (1983), “Black President” (1990) and “Nomakanjani” (1999), demonstrates how each facet of her identity (race, gender, sexuality and cultural) is presented in her music and how this reflection can be used to offer a better understanding of Fassie, her music, and the socio-political culture in South Africa. The first part of this thesis offers a brief introduction to Fassie’s life. It demonstrates how intersectional approaches to identity offer a more well-rounded representation of Fassie. It also explores the literature on black female musicians, South African music and history, and Fassie. The three subsequent chapters each analyze a specific song through close readings of the lyrics and music. By analyzing the three songs and the socio-political conditions they were produced in, this thesis reveals how understandings of Fassie’s gender, sexuality, racial and cultural identities were shaped by preexisting gender and societal norms, and how she interacted with these identities. Fassie questioned, and legitimized these aspects of her identity through her music, and in her personal life.
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No abstract available.
In this thesis, I offer an intersectional study of Brenda Fassie (1964-2004), a leading popular musician in South Africa in the 1980s to early-2000s. Previous studies have focused separately on aspects of race, gender, sexuality and politics in her life and music in apartheid and post-apartheid years. This study looks at multiple aspects of her identity and develops a critical approach that intertwines them.Fassie was a popular musician who grew up during the racial segregation of apartheid (1948-1990s) and both witnessed and participated in the birth of South African democracy (1994). As a black and queer woman, Fassie’s identity deeply impacted the way she produced her music and how it was received by audiences and critics. A discussion of three songs, “Weekend Special” (1983), “Black President” (1990) and “Nomakanjani” (1999), demonstrates how each facet of her identity (race, gender, sexuality and cultural) is presented in her music and how this reflection can be used to offer a better understanding of Fassie, her music, and the socio-political culture in South Africa. The first part of this thesis offers a brief introduction to Fassie’s life. It demonstrates how intersectional approaches to identity offer a more well-rounded representation of Fassie. It also explores the literature on black female musicians, South African music and history, and Fassie. The three subsequent chapters each analyze a specific song through close readings of the lyrics and music. By analyzing the three songs and the socio-political conditions they were produced in, this thesis reveals how understandings of Fassie’s gender, sexuality, racial and cultural identities were shaped by preexisting gender and societal norms, and how she interacted with these identities. Fassie questioned, and legitimized these aspects of her identity through her music, and in her personal life.
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