#  Maria Sonevytsky 

Visiting Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Associate Professor of Music and Anthropology, Bard College

 

 

 



   ![Maria sonevytsky ](/sites/g/files/omnuum2186/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2026-06/headshot%20MS%202021.jpeg?h=811babcc&itok=xCyjhc2p) 

 



 

 email <msonevyt@bard.edu> 

 laptop\_windows [Professor Sonevytsky's Bard faculty page can be found here](https://www.bard.edu/faculty/maria-sonevytsky) 

 

 



 

I am an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Music at Bard College and am delighted to be Visiting the Department of Slavic Language &amp; Literatures at Harvard University in the Fall of 2026.

I am a scholar of Ukraine, with a particular interest in the intersection of musical culture and state and regional politics. My first book, [*Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine*](https://wildmusicbook.com/) (2019), won the Lewis Lockwood First Book Award from the American Musicological Society in 2020. My second book, [*Vopli Vidopliassova’s Tantsi*](https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/vopli-vidopliassovas-tantsi-9781501363146/)*,* examined the late Soviet Ukrainian punk band VV’s first cassette release. It appeared in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 Europe series in 2023, alongside the first official release of the album, which I facilitated, on the LA-based reissue label [ORG Music](https://orgmusic.com/collections/vopli-vidopliassova). My current book project adopts a historical anthropological approach to the study of Soviet Ukrainian children’s musical culture at the Kyiv Palace of Pioneers. In tandem with this book project, I am building a digital archive for the Kyiv Palace of Children and Youth (the successor institution to the Kyiv Palace of Pioneers) with a team of collaborators.

I have published over a dozen scholarly articles and book chapters in venues including *The Slavic Review, Public Culture,* *Ethnomusicology*, *Music &amp; Politics,* and the *Journal of Popular Music Studies*. Public-facing works, critical reviews, and multimedia projects have appeared in *Triple Canopy*, *Pitchfork*, the *LA Review of Books*, the *London Ukrainian Review*, and *Smithsonian Folkways*. I am also a practicing vocalist and accordionist, and am currently developing a new song cycle, *BEREZA/BERYOZE*, inspired by Yiddish- and Ukrainian-language vernacular song traditions, with my trio Zozulka. More at [www.mariasonevytsky.com](http://www.mariasonevytsky.com/).



 

 

 





 

 

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