Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Ruby Erickson is a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Music, pursuing a Ph.D. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology and a Doctoral Certificate in Africana Studies. She has published articles in Anthropology Today and Ethnomusicology. Her dissertation, which has been supported by a Fellowship from the Society for American Music, queries the theorization of “cultural sustainability” through grounded analysis of grassroots cultural vitality work by Cabo Verdean Americans, revealing that community members “keep the music alive” through an ethics of material indebtedness and an aesthetics of temporal non-linearity. She is a collaborator in several community-centered arts and activism projects; she co-hosts a public-facing podcast, “Sounds from the Eleventh Star,” an episode of which was republished by UCLA’s Sounds Promising, and she is the Secretary for the Cabo Verdean Heritage Month Coalition, a local cultural advocacy collective which was recently awarded a project grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. She is the Vice President of the Lusophone African Studies Organization, an affiliate of the African Studies Association.