Catherine Slowik
Cat Slowik (2015) is a PhD candidate in music history. Before coming to Yale, she earned a BA in art history and anthropology at Columbia University. Her dissertation, “Cantus Firmus Techniques in English Instrumental Music (1540–1680)” (advised by Gary Tomlinson) considers technē as a form of musical knowledge and discusses the particular techniques of instrumental cantus firmus composition in England, from the in nomine to the hexachord fantasy.
In 2019, Cat developed and co-taught an undergraduate seminar on “Audile Technique” with Brian Kane. Other fields of interest include media archeology, digital philology, the music–language metaphor, and feminist theory. Cat co-convenes Yale’s Sound Studies Working Group and co-founded the Yale Music Gender Equity Initiative in 2018. As a cellist and viol player, Cat appears frequently in New York, DC, and New Haven. She performs regularly as a member of the Smithsonian Consort of Viols, the Elm City Consort, the Yale Collegium Musicum, and the Yale Baroque Opera Project, and she directs the Yale Consort of Viols.