Dan Fister
Dr. Daniel Fister (he/him) is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in contemporary U.S. popular music and race. He earned a Ph.D. in Musicology and a graduate certificate in American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, as well as a BA in Music from Chapman University’s Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music. In his ethnographic dissertation, he examined how race, particularly whiteness, impacts the sounds and social structures of contemporary scholastic a cappella. His research has been supported by the Margery Lowens Dissertation Fellowship from the Society for American Music and funding from Washington University in St. Louis. And he received the 2021 Lise Waxer Student Paper Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Popular Music Section.
Dr. Fister served as an Editorial Assistant for the journal American Music from 2019–22 and co-authored the introductory article, “The 701 Articles of American Music: A Quantitative Study of Forty Years of Scholarship,” for the journal’s issue 40.4. He is also a previous co-chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Voice Studies Special Interest Group.
Dr. Fister moved to the Bay Area in 2022 where he teaches courses at local colleges including Santa Clara University and University of California-Santa Cruz. Besides teaching, he is the Associate Director of the Silicon Valley Gay Men’s Chorus, for whom he directs the small ensemble Desperate Measures. He is also a sought-after adjudicator for a cappella competitions.