Henry Spiller
 hjspiller@ucdavis.edu 116 B St. 530.757.5791 Office Hours TBD |
Henry Spiller is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on Sundanese music and dance from West Java, Indonesia. He is interested particularly in investigating how individuals deploy music and dance in their personal lives to articulate ethnic, gender, and national identities. He has studied Sundanese music and dance for more than 20 years, and he has conducted fieldwork in Bandung, West Java, on several occasions, including 10 months of Fulbright-sponsored dissertation research in 1998–99. ABC-CLIO published his first book, Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia, in 2004. In 2008, Routledge released a second edition under the title Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia. His latest book, Erotic Triangles: Sundanese Dance and Masculinity in West Java, is slated for publication in 2010. It focuses on constructions of masculinity in Sundanese men's improvisational dance in West Java, Indonesia. His current project involves researching 20th-century North Americans who were attracted to Javanese music and dance. Spiller's articles and book chapters appear in publications such as The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Asian Music, Worlds of Music, Asian Theatre Journal, and Journal of the Society for American Music. He has presented papers at regional and national meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), the Association for Theatre Arts (ATA), and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). Spiller holds a bachelor's degree in music from UC Santa Cruz, a master's degree in harp performance from Holy Names College, and a master's degree and the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley. He taught gamelan at Mills College in Oakland, California, and music at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. From 2002–05 he served as Luce Assistant Professor in Asian Music and Culture at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. At UC Davis, Spiller teaches world music classes and graduate seminars, and he directs the Department of Music's gamelan ensemble.
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