David VanderHamm began his academic career as a performer, working full-time as a free-lance musician while completing a master’s degree in guitar performance from the University of Denver and teaching at the University of Denver and Arapahoe Community College. He then shifted his focus to the cultural and historical aspects of music, receiving his M.A. and Ph. D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to this background in ethnomusicology, musicology, and popular music studies, his teaching and scholarship regularly engages with the fields of cultural history, philosophy, media studies, religious studies, and art history (among others). He’s taught a wide range of topics from global popular music and the history of rock to classical mythology and introduction to humanities, and he’s offered these courses at an equally diverse group of institutions, including the University of Central Oklahoma, the University of Denver, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and JCCC.
Dr. VanderHamm’s primary research is on the phenomenon of virtuosity and its many iterations in American music and media from the 20th century to the present. Across many genres and case studies, he pursues deceptively simple questions: What counts as skill? Why does it matter? These questions drive his current book project, Virtuosity in the Age of Electronic Media: Music, Labor, and Skill (under contract with Palgrave Macmillan). His prior publications on the topic of virtuosity have appeared in Oxford Bibliographies Online, The Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures (co-edited with Harris Berger and Friedlind Riedel), and The Journal of the Society for American Music. He has also published on the impact of advertising and commodification on American music and culture in The Public Historian, American Music, and The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising.
When he’s not teaching, playing, or writing, Dr. VanderHamm is likely cooking for his wife and two kids or trying to squeeze in a run; in recent years he completed 1 marathon and 4 half-marathons.