Theory & Composition News

We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Rachel Hottle, who joined the FSU faculty in Fall 2026 as Assistant Professor of Music Theory. Hottle completed the Ph.D. in music theory at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University as well as a graduate concentration in gender and women’s studies. She served as instructor of record for a range of courses at McGill, including first-year music theory and ear training classes, 19th-century theory and analysis, and 20th/21st-century theory and analysis. She also taught music theory and aural skills at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, MA. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled “Elizabeth Cotten, Joni Mitchell, and the Guitar/Body Interface,” integrates fretboard analysis with disability theory to examine the embodied and musical effects of the acoustic guitar’s physical interface. She was selected as one of two winners of the Society for Music Theory’s “SMT-40 Dissertation Fellowship” for 2025, and her research also received support from the Fonds de recherche du Québec. An expanded version of her SMT presentation entitled “The Embodied Folk Guitar of Elizabeth Cotten” was published in the August 2025 of Music Theory Online. She presented research on the music of the Punch Brothers at a previous SMT meeting, and has presented at AMS on Joni Mitchell and Esperanza Spalding.