Catherine Ragland

Cathy Ragland (PhD, Ethnomusicology, Graduate Center, City University of New York; MA, Ethnomusicology, University of Washington-Seattle; BA, Liberal Arts (Russian, minor), University of Texas-Austin) is UNT Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Program Coordinator, and Mariachi Águilas Faculty Coordinator/Advisor.  Before coming to UNT, Dr. Ragland was Assistant Professor of Music at UT-Pan American (now UTRGV) and Empire State College, State University of New York (SUNY). Prior to these appointments, she was a lecturer in the School of Music at Temple University and Lehman College in the Deptartment of Latin American, Latino and Puerto Rican Studies and an instructor in the School of Music, Hunter College, New York.

Her research and scholarship focus on US-Mexico border music, rurality, and the politics of identity, memory and place, music and immigration/migration and gender. She has conducted research throughout Texas and the American Southwest, in Northern and Central Mexico, and Northern Spain. She is an experienced folklorist and public/engaged ethnomusicologist who has collaborated with community partners in creating sustainable public music and arts programs, festivals, exhibitions, workshops and education initiatives in South Texas; Seattle, Washington; and New York. As a former popular music journalist, she has published columns and articles for the San Antonio Express-News, Austin American Statesman, Seattle Times, and Seattle Weekly.

She is author of the book Música Norteña, Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation between Nations (Temple Univ. Press, 2009) and has published chapters in Decentering the Nation: Music, Mexicanidad, and Globalization (Lexington Books, 2019); Cumbia!: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre (Duke Univ. Press, 2013); The Accordion in the Americas: Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More! (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2012); Transnational Encounters: Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011), Gateways: Northeastern Mexico and South Tejas, One Region, One Culture: An Anthology of Essays (Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, 2011); and Puro Conjunto, An Album in Words, Pictures, Writings, Posters and Photos from the Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio, 1982-1998 (Univ. of Texas Press, 2001). She has published several entries on Tejano and Norteño in Grove Dictionary of Music Online and academic essays, reviews, and articles in The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Ethnomusicology, Estudios Mexicanos, The Free Reed Journal, Tonatzin, and others.