Musicologist Joins Department of Music

Koval was a visiting assistant professor of musicology for the 2024-25 academic year, teaching courses in music literature, music history and music research.

"The students and colleagues I have met during my first year on campus have shown the university to be a wonderful place to develop my research and learn from the students, who have already taught me so much about country music, drum corps and much more," she said. "I look forward to singing from medieval manuscripts, problem solving with primary sources and listening deeply to music with the students again soon."

Before joining the Ole Miss faculty, Koval was a graduate fellow at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She earned her doctorate from Harvard University and degrees in musicology and English literature from the University of Toronto and Queen's University in Canada.

Her research explores the everyday musical practices of people in early modern Europe, examining music's impacts on bodies and societies through material traces of their lives, particularly personal handwritten music collections. This work has been supported by fellowships from Harvard University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

"In the early modern period, many Europeans believed that music had a physical impact on not only their mood, but their health," Koval said. "Whenever I share my research with people, they tell me how they use music in their own daily lives: to energize or motivate themselves, to lean into a sad feeling.

"Although our explanations for this mechanism differ greatly, we can still find a common ground with the past through music, which for me makes music research very engaging."

She is working on a book, "Tuning the Body: Musical Health Regimens in Early Modern England." The project explores how music served as part of routines of household health care in 17th century households, analyzing musical entries found alongside recipes for food and medicine in early modern manuscripts.

Drawing on book history and the history of medicine, Koval sheds light on music's role in everyday care, particularly among women and household servants.

"The focus of this project is to provide critical insight into the way music was used for its healing benefits by making sense of music collected within personalized household recipe books" she said.

Koval has been awarded a prestigious long-term fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. During her nine-month residency that begins this month, she plans to conduct research for her book.

"This prestigious fellowship speaks to the magnitude of her work and will advance Dr. Koval's research in a way that will have a great impact both on our campus and in the field of music," said Nancy Maria Balach, chair of the Department of Music.

Koval plans to continue the project next summer in Oxford, England, as the Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellow in Music at Oxford University's Bodleian Library.

She will resume teaching at Ole Miss in the fall of 2026 after the fellowships are completed.

Top: Sarah Koval (left) chats with fellow musicologist Thomas Peattie, associate professor of music at the university. After spending the 2024-25 academic year as a visiting professor, Koval has joined the Ole Miss faculty as an assistant professor of music. Photo by Bill Dabney/UM Foundation