Dr. Thomas Owens

Dr. Tom C. Owens is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music History and Literature at George Mason University.  Internationally regarded as an expert on Charles Ives’s life and music, he is the editor of Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives (Univ. of California Press, 2007) and a member of the board of the Charles Ives Society. From the time he began his doctoral studies at Yale University, Dr. Owens has been interested in the American context of art, literature, and music in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Much of his research and teaching centers on  this area particularly with reference to Charles Ives and the composers and performers in his circle. His other research interests include Modernism, musical and stylistic borrowing, popular music, and Balinese music. Dr. Owens is currently working on a book exploring uses and meanings of stylistic borrowing, musical quotation, and musical allusion in the works of select twentieth-century composers.Teaching is fundamental to Dr. Owens’s work as a scholar. He has worked to revise, strengthen, and expand the curriculum in music at Mason, most recently with the creation of a new program in Music Technology.

In 2010 he received George Mason’s Teaching Excellence.

Associate Professor of Music

• Coordinator of Music History & Literature
• Advanced Topics in Music History
• Music History
• Teaching Internships

Degrees

• PhD, Music, Yale University
• B.A. University of North Carolina at Greensboro