Elizabeth Clendinning

Associate Professor of Music

Ethnomusicology, music of Bali

I am an Associate Professor of Music at Wake Forest University (WFU) specializing in ethnomusicology. A graduate of Florida State University (Ph.D. 2013, M.M. 2009) and The University of Chicago (B.A. 2007), I was previously Visiting Instructor in Ethnomusicology and Director of World Music at Emory University (2013-2014). At Wake Forest, I teach courses in world, Asian, and popular music and direct the Balinese gamelan, Gamelan Giri Murti. I embrace my role as a teacher-scholar through incorporating my research into my teaching and providing hands-on opportunities for my students to experience music and culture, including collaborating with WFU’s Lam Museum of Anthropology, the WakerSpace, and the WFU Campus Garden.

My research interests are interdisciplinary by nature, engaging with multiple aspects of the following constellation of subjects: Indonesia, especially Bali; the Asian-American diaspora; pedagogy; film and television; and cultural and environmental sustainability.

My writing related to Indonesian performing arts and pedagogy has appeared in various journals and edited volumes, including Ethnomusicology, Yearbook for Traditional Music, MUSICultures, the Journal of Dance Education, and Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music (ed. McGraw and Miller, Cornell University Press, 2022). My first book, American Gamelan and the Ethnomusicological Imagination (University of Illinois Press, 2020), examines American collegiate world music ensemble education and the lives of “world music” instructors through the lens of transnational Balinese gamelan communities. I am also co-author (with Henry Spiller) of Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia, 3rd edition (Routledge, 2022).

My current project concerning the Balinese bamboo suling, conducted with I Gde Made Indra Sadguna (ISI-Denpasar), has been supported by grants from WFU’s Interdisciplinary Arts Center and the AIFIS-Luce Documentary Filmmaker Grant (2024).

I serve as the Associate Chair of the Department of Music and have held active service roles with the Society for Ethnomusicology at the national and regional levels since 2009.

Elizabeth Clendinning Headshot