Details
Skills
Translation from French to English; academic writing; teaching music history; teaching piano lessons; teaching music analysis; public speaking; editing
About
Tekla Babyak holds a PhD in Musicology from Cornell University. Based in Davis, CA, she is an independent scholar and disability activist with multiple sclerosis (MS). Her research interests include European Romanticism, with a focus on musical analysis and philosophical aesthetics. Recent publications have appeared in journals such as 19th-Century Music and Nineteenth-Century Music Review as well as several edited collections. Currently, she is working on an autoethnography exploring how her MS-related neurodivergence intersects with her erotic attraction to composers such as Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.
Tekla always brings an activist-oriented perspective to her research projects. She advocates for her access needs when giving talks and publishing her work, requesting compliments to accommodate her MS-related anxiety disorder. These requests are a form of activism. Scholars are expected to be (or at least appear) confident when presenting their work publicly. Subverting these ableist expectations, Tekla aims to destigmatize – and honor – anxiety disclosure in professional spaces, and to celebrate disabled ways of navigating academia.
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