Professor Susan C. Cook and Professor Paul Rowe are retiring this spring.

Cook is a professor of musicology, and was formerly the academic associate dean for the Arts and Humanities in the Graduate School and director of the School of Music. She also held the Walt Whitman Chair in American Culture Studies as part of the Fulbright Distinguished Teaching Program in the Netherlands.

Cook’s teaching and research focuses on contemporary and American music of all kinds and demonstrates her abiding interest in feminist methodologies and cultural criticism. The author of Opera for a New Republic, she also co-edited 2 volumes of essays, Cecilia Reclaimed and most recently Bodies of Sound: Studies Across Popular Music and Dance, in collaboration with dance historian Sherril Dodds. As director of the School of Music, Cook played a critical role in the Hamel Music Center building campaign, as well as leading discussions on the department’s strategic vision and mission.

Professor of Voice Paul Rowe has also served on the voice faculties of the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, Vanderbilt University, State University of New York at Purchase, Lehigh University and Nazareth College of Rochester, the Berkshire Choral Festival, and the Tennessee State Governor’s School. He was the Artistic Director of the Madison Early Music Festival, an annual festival he helped found in 2000.

Rowe has maintained a wide ranging performing career throughout the United States for the past 20 years. He has performed with many of the leading American musical organizations including the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa at Symphony Hall in Boston and Carnegie Hall in New York, American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera and Kennedy Center, and Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. He has appeared as well with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Alabama and Arkansas symphony orchestras, the Folger Consort, and the Ensemble for Early Music, among many other groups.