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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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