Ph.D. alumnus Michael Accinno has received a University of California, Riverside Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. Awarded in partnership with the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program, the two-year fellowship supports scholars in all fields who contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at the University of California. A highly competitive award, fifty fellows were selected for the honor out of an applicant pool of over 850.  

Accinno graduated in December 2016 after successfully defending his dissertation “Gestures of Inclusion: Blindness, Music, and Pedagogy in Nineteenth-Century Thought.” He has presented his research on music and blindness at national professional meetings, including the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the Society for Disability Studies. His work on music and disability has been published in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (Oxford University Press, 2016). During his fellowship, Accinno plans to shape his dissertation into a book, tentatively titled “Gestures of Inclusion: Blindness, Music, and Pedagogy in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” Accinno completed his dissertation “Gestures of Inclusion: Blindness, Music, and Pedagogy in Nineteenth-Century Thought” in 2016 under the supervision of Carol A. Hess, Professor and Chair of the Music Department.