Felicia Youngblood PhD

About

Felicia K. Youngblood received her PhD in Musicology from Florida State University in 2019, where she was a member of the Fellows Society, a Krebs Scholar, and a graduate assistant with the Program for Instructional Excellence. Her current work evaluates how music sustainability efforts can be used to reclaim traditionally underrepresented voices, for which she received a Presser Foundation Graduate Music Research Award in 2017. In particular, she collaborates with the Club per l’UNESCO di Galatina to better understand the contributions of women to a centuries-old southern Italian ritual known as tarantism. Dr. Youngblood’s research explores how the Club’s tarantism festival and reenactments highlight the voices and essential roles of these women as cornerstones of Apulian identity. An article on this topic, “On Un-Silencing Voices: Tarantismo and the Gendered Heritage of Apulia,” was published in the journal Folk Life in March 2019. 

Dr. Youngblood is a co-founder and the current chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Disability and Deaf Studies Group and an active member of the Applied Ethnomusicology section, Section on the Status of Women, and the Gender and Sexualities Taskforce. Her other research interests include music and health, women’s US community choirs, witchcraft and Pagan soundscapes, and disability and Deaf studies. As a performer, she identifies primarily as a vocalist and a dancer. Her experience is in diverse genres such as musical theatre, rock and roll, West African drum and dance, Italian folk, Middle Eastern belly dance, eighteenth-century Western art song, traditional Irish singing and step, and Caribbean salsa. Some of her more notable performances have been with funk artist George Clinton, composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, and with multiple award-winning world music artists, such as Haiqiong Deng (Chinese guzheng) and Diadie Bathily (West African dance). In her spare time, Dr. Youngblood enjoys singing and dancing, yoga, reading fantasy novels, playing board games, and organizing social events. She looks forward to continuing her work as an instructor, a researcher, and a vocalist in the coming years.

Degrees

• BA, Music Education - Catawba College
• MM, Ethnomusicology - Florida State University
• PhD, Musicology - Florida State University