Alexander Carpenter, PhD, MA, BMus

Area of Study / Keywords

Musicology Vienna popular music film music zombies horror studies aesthetics psychoanalysis Program: Creativity and Culture Program: Bachelor of Music

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About

I am a musicologist, music critic and musician.  My research focuses on the music of Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, but also deals more broadly with Viennese cultural and intellectual history.  I am also a scholar of popular music, and have published on a wide array of topics, including David Bowie, progressive rock, gothic rock, popular music and national identity, film music and the waltz. I am the editor of the book Schoenberg in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and co-editor of the forthcoming volume Echoes of Tartini (Brill-Boehlau).  At Augustana, I have served as Director of Music and as Chair of Fine Arts and Humanities. From 2021-25, I served as the Director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies in the Faculty of Arts, Edmonton campus of the University of Alberta.  

I teach courses on the history European art music (from Ancient Greece to the present), popular music, film music and aesthetics. In the spring of 2026, I will teach a place-based course on music history in Vienna, Austria.  

As  musician, I perform regularly as a singer and guitarist with the Edmonton-based rock bands Boomstick and The Exstatics.  

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Research

Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, music and modernism, fin-de siecle-Vienna, popular music, music and psychoanalysis, zombies in popular culture, film music. 

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Teaching

Music history/musicology, cultural history, popular music, aesthetics, theory/harmony, interdisciplinary studies

AUIDS 286 - Selected Topics in Place-Based Studies

Selected topics in place-based learning in specific off-campus locations. The focus and content of each course are determined by student and faculty interests, and may vary from year to year. The course will take a specific place as the location and subject of study. The locations of study can be international or closer to home, but in all instances will encourage a significant engagement with the place. Note: AUIDS 286 is classified as an arts course.

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AUMUS 225 - Music from the Classical Era to the Present Day

Study of western European art music from the mid-18th century to the 20th century, in the context of general cultural history.

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AUMUS 226 - Music and the Moving Image

An examination of the use of music in film, television, and video games, with an emphasis on semiotic analysis and the historical development of the aesthetics and technologies of linking music to moving images.

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Browse more courses taught by Alexander Carpenter

Alexander Carpenter

Cambridge University Press. 2025 September;

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Alexander Carpenter

Palgrave Handbook of the Zombie. 2025 March;

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Alexander Carpenter

European Journal of Musicology. 2024 September; 22 (2)

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Jerome Melancon, Alexander Carpenter

Journal of Zizek Studies. 2017 January; 11 (3):203-228

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Alexander Carpenter

Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music. 2010 January; 30 (2):5-24

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Alexander Carpenter

Journal of Popular Culture. 46 (6):1231-1252

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Alexander Carpenter

Popular Music and Society. 40 (3):261-273