Alexander Carpenter, PhD, MA, BMus

Area of Study / Keywords

Musicology Vienna popular music film music zombies horror studies aesthetics psychoanalysis

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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 101 - First Year Seminar

Selected topics that highlight the interdisciplinary nature of the Liberal Arts and Sciences. This seminar-style class is the first course in Augustana's Core. The focus and content of each course are determined by faculty interests, and vary from year to year.

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AUMUS 170 - Tuning In: An Introduction to Music

Development of listening approaches and techniques for understanding and appreciating a variety of Western and non-Western music, and an examination of the ideologies that prompt the sampling of such music. Music studied includes Western art music, African music, First Nations music, North Indian music, and popular music.

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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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AUMUS 369 - Popular Music: Analysis, Interpretation, Meaning

Critical examination of popular music, with a focus on analytical paradigms and methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches to interpretation.

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Browse more courses taught by Alexander Carpenter

Alexander Carpenter

Cambridge University Press. 2025 July;

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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