Margaret Rowley

Margaret L. Rowley, PhD

  • Assistant Professor of Musicology
Media Expertise:
  • Arts & Culture
  • Race
  • Social Justice
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Affiliated Programs

Education

  • PhD, Ethnomusicology (2023)
    Boston University (Massachusetts)
  • MA, Ethnomusicology (2009)
    Michigan State University (Michigan)
  • MM, Flute Performance (2009)
    Michigan State University (Michigan)
  • BM, Flute Performance (2006)
    Missouri State University (Missouri)

About Me

I am the Assistant Professor of Musicology at Widener, where I teach courses on music, religion, and society. My work focuses on Sufism and Islamic sound practices in Senegal, West Africa, alongside state secularism, women and gender, and the senses in modern discourse. Through this work, I've become engaged in musical and non-musical sound and state regulation, and non-western feminism(s). I hold master’s degrees in ethnomusicology and flute performance from Michigan State University, where my thesis examined women DJs in Chicago’s house music scene. My other previous work has focused on sonic torture in Guantanamo, and Islam and the secular state in France.

I am passionate about teaching, empowering students to refine and trust their ears, both when listening to music and when listening to the world around us. I want my students to feel that they are part of a learning community where all of us are becoming better listeners.

Research Interests

  • Music, Sound, and Religion
  • Islam
  • Sufism
  • The Layène community
  • Religious sound practices in Senegal
  • Senegalese popular music
  • Race, gender, and sexuality in music
  • Music and violence
  • State secularism
  • Postcolonialism/neocolonialism
  • Religion and secularism in France
  • Pedagogy and canon deconstruction in post-secondary music education.

Publications

Rowley, Margaret Lynn. "Sounding Modern-nite: Tabaski in Senegal and the Sonic Production of the Human." Ethnomusicology 68:3 (2024): 361–380.

Ndiaye, Gana, Margaret Rowley, & E. D. Diagne. 2023. “Beating the Drums in God’s Wrestling Arena”: Spirituality Translated into Local Metaphor in Wolof Sufi ʿAjamī Poetry. Islamic Africa.

Ndiaye, Bamba, and Margaret Rowley. 2022. "’Mbas Mi’: Fighting COVID-19 Through Music in Senegal." African Studies Review 65, no. 1: 234-59.

Professional Affiliations & Memberships

  • Society for Ethnomusicology
  • African Studies Association
  • International Association for the Study of Popular Music
  • International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance

Awards

  • Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Fellowship (2021)
  • Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University (2021)
  • Musicology & Ethnomusicology Department Award, Boston University (2023) Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Program Awardee, Boston University (2023)