About Dena Epstein
The Dena Epstein Award for Archival and Library Research in American Music was created through a generous endowment from Morton and Dena Epstein to the Music Library Association in 1995. Grants are awarded to support research in archives or libraries internationally on any aspect of American music. There are no restrictions as to an applicant's age, nationality, profession, or institutional affiliation. All proposals are reviewed entirely on the basis of merit. The decision by the Dena Epstein Award Committee and the Board of Directors of the Music Library Association is announced at the MLA annual meeting. Calls for applications are issued in the spring.
2014 Call for Applications
- 2013
- Alecia Barbour (Stony Brook University): "Music and Remembrance: Listening to U.S. 'Internment' Camps, 1939-1947."
- 2012
- Mark Burford (Reed College): For research on Mahalia Jackson
- 2011
- Nancy Yunhwa Rao (Rutgers University): "Spectacular Sound across Borders: Chinese Opera Theaters in Chinatowns and Beyond"
- 2010
- Ursula Crosslin (Ohio State University): "The Institutionalization of Sacred Vocal Music in Cincinnati, 1810-1860."
- 2009
- Lara Housez (Eastman School of Music): "Becoming Sondheim: From Forum to Company."
Maria Cristina Fava (Eastman School of Music): "Marc Blitzstein and the Political Value of Music: New York City in the 1930s." - 2008
- Steven Robert Swayne (Dartmouth College): For research on a biography of William Schuman.
Nikos Pappas (University of Kentucky): “Sacred Music Tune Index of Trans-Appalachian and Southern Antebellum Source Material (1760-1870).” - 2007
- Sarah Dorsey (University of North Carolina, Greensboro): For research on a biography of Louise Talma.
R. Allen Lott (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary): For a critical edition of nineteenth-century American hymnody. - 2006
- Robin Rausch (Library of Congress): For research on a biography of Marian MacDowell.
David Hursh (East Carolina University): For research on a biography and digital exhibit about North Carolinian Alice Person. - 2005
- Melissa J. de Graaf (Brandeis University): “The New York City Composers’ Forum, 1935-1940: A Missing Link in American Music.”
- 2004
- Kati Agocs: For a critical edition of Leopold Damrosch’s Symphony in A major (1878).
Jane Ellsworth: For research on the history of the clarinet in early America from its appearance in the late 1750s to 1820.
Catherine Smith: For research on a biography of William Grant Still. - 2003
- Ayden Adler (Eastman School of Music): “'Classical Music for People who Hate Classical Music'”: the Influence of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra on the Culture of Classical Music in America.”
Ryan Jones (Brandeis University): “Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land.” - 2002
- Clemens Gresser (University of Southampton, England): “The New York School in Performance—the Need for further Instructions.”
Robert Haskins (Eastman School of Music): “'An Anarchic Society of Sounds': the Number Pieces of John Cage.” - 2001
- Elizabeth Bergman Crist: “Progressivism and Populism: Aaron Copland’s Music and Aesthetics during Depression and War.”
Ruth A. Inman: “Research on and study of the Martin and Morris Music Company Records, 1930-1985.”
Roberta Lindsey: for Copland research. - 2000
- Jo Burgess (Indiana University): for research on southern Illinois folk music.
Karen Rege (Delaware College of Art and Design): for research on Arthur Farwell and his relationship to the Arts and Crafts movement of the early twentieth century. - 1999
- Sally Bick (Yale University): “Film Music and Its Critical Assessment in American Art Music Circles of the 1930s and 40s.”
Svetlana Sigida (Moscow Conservatory): for a study of American art music and culture in the first half of the twentieth century and the influence of Marxist ideology on American composers. - 1998
- Edward L. Widmer: in support of work on a book about the white suppression of African drumming in colonial America and its ramifications into the twentieth century.
- 1997
- Nancy Newman: for study of the repertory and the historical and cultural influences of the Germania Musical Society in the United States.
Nancy Toff: for research on a biography of the French-American flutist Georges Barrère (1876-1944). - 1996
- Norm Cohen: in support of his work to compile a checklist of pocket songsters published in the United States between 1860 and 1899.