Tekla Babyak holds a PhD in Musicology from Cornell University. Based in Davis, CA, she is an independent scholar and disability activist with multiple sclerosis (MS). Her research focuses on analysis and aesthetics in European musical Romanticism. Recent publications have appeared in 19^th-Century Music and Joseph Joachim: Identities/Identitäten.

Joseph Straus has argued that musicology and theory often focus on so-called “normal” listeners. As a disabled woman who has MS, I aim to subvert these ableist erasures. As such, I offer an autoethnography of what I call my neuroqueer experience of music: I am sexually attracted to (long-dead) composers such as Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák. Exploring the musical features that I find erotically stimulating, my presentation suggests that my MS-related neurodivergence shapes my bodymind and musico-sexual orientation.