Dr. Elina G. Asato Hamilton
Assistant Professor of Music
Musicology
Dr. Elina G. Asato Hamilton is a historical musicologist whose primary research area explores the history of music theory in fourteenth-century England. Her work on the intersection between theoretical texts and musical sources focuses on the interaction of theorists among themselves, with other musicians, and with main-stream thoughts in the Middle Ages. Her current project examines how shifts in thought transformed the way theorists in England discussed music, especially during the period when arguments for a consonant third were being established. Her book, Sweet Consonance: Musical Discourse in England, c. 1280–1370, is under contract with Liverpool University Press. Her research has been published in Studi musicali, Musica Disciplina, Notes, and in several edited volumes published by Routledge, Brepols, and Boydell & Brewer.
In her secondary area of interest, Dr. Hamilton actively contributes to scholarly discussions on Western music in Japan. As a native speaker of Japanese, she aims to transcend the traditional divides between Ethnomusicology and Musicology by bringing a crucial yet underexplored global perspective to the twentieth-century expansion of classical music. She currently serves as co-chair of the Global East Asian Music Research Study Group (American Musicological Society) and is an editorial board member of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture.
Hamilton’s research has been recognized as outstanding by the Drapers’ Company (one of six medals awarded in the London-based guild’s 600-year history) and her teaching has been distinguished by the Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching award at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa.
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, she taught courses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Dr. Hamilton regularly presents her research at national and international meetings for musicology, including at the American Musicological Society annual meetings, at the International Musicological Society Quinquennial Conference, the International Medieval and Renaissance Music Conferences, and has participated in conferences and workshops at institutions including Oxford University, University of St. Andrews, Charles University, Princeton University, MIT, and Yale University, among others.
Dr. Hamilton holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree with Distinction from Bangor University in Wales, UK, where she organized several international conferences, including a conference on the discussion of innovative music notation (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council) and several workshops on the history of medieval music theory. While at Bangor University, Dr. Hamilton advocated for the promotion of new music and was festival manager for the annual Bangor New Music Festival. She received her BM in piano performance from Portland State University where she studied piano with Harold Gray (former director of Portland Piano International) and counterpoint and composition with Bryan Johanson.
Courses Taught:
MUS265 History of Western Music to 1750
MUS266 History of Western Music to the present
MUS348 Western Music and Japan
MUS463E Choral Music (Sacred Motets)
MUS461F Romantic Era (Keyboard and its Context)
MUS600D Women in Music
MUS600D History of Music Theory to Rameau
MUS661 Bibliography and Research