About

Joshua Kalin Busman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Music and Assistant Dean of the Esther G. Maynor Honors College. A native of Knoxville, TN, he comes to North Carolina from just over the Great Smoky Mountains. In 2009, he graduated summa cum laude from Middle Tennessee State University with a B.M. in Music Theory and Composition. In 2011, he completed an M.A. in Musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a thesis focusing on sixteenth-century French Calvinist psalm-singing  In May 2015, he received his Ph.D. in Musicology from UNC-Chapel Hill with a dissertation titled “(Re)Sounding Passion: Listening to American Evangelical Worship Music (1997-Present).” His research focuses broadly on contemporary evangelical Christianity with particular focuses on worship, affect, and mass-media. Over the past several years, Joshua has been invited to present his research at a host of regional, national, and international conferences and has published original research in journals such as Religions, Liturgy, Ethnomusicology Review, the Journal of the Society for American Music, The Avid Listener, and The Other Journal, as well as in multiple edited collections from Oxford University Press, Routledge Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Bloomsbury Academic, and the National Collegiate Honors Council. He is a past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Southeast and Caribbean Chapter as well as the SEM Religion, Music, and Sound study group. Currently, he serves as co-chair for the Music and Religion Unit in the American Academy of Religion and as a member of the Executive Board of the North Carolina Honors Association. In addition to his academic work, Joshua also serves as “Music Nerd-in-Residence” for the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra, connecting classical music to the broader public through his writing and speaking. He is also an active composer throughout the Cape Fear region with recent performances by the UNCP Percussion Ensemble, Sweet Tea Shakespeare, and as part of the Cape Fear New Music Festival at Methodist University. When he isn't reading, writing, or researching, Joshua likes to play guitar and hang out with his wife, two sons, and their crazy dog at home in Fayetteville, NC.