Cedric McCoy

Cedric Preston McCoy (he/him) is a first year PhD student and Dean’s Emerging Scholar in Music and African American Studies at Yale University. His research interests include the intersections of race, gender, liberatory politics, and popular music. He aims to be a scholar of Black American and Afro-Diasporic popular musics, the Black Radical tradition, and contemporary histories of resistance. Prior to attending Yale, Cedric completed a BMus with High Honors in Music History (specializing in Ethnomusicology) at the University of Michigan.

Cedric pursues writing in both academic and commonly accessible contexts; during his time at the University of Michigan, he was an assistant editor for Michigan in Color of The Michigan Daily where he wrote about race, gender, and disability in popular music among other topics. Cedric is also dedicated to the public and digital humanities: relevant efforts he has contributed to include A Century of Women and the Carillon under Dr. Tiffany Ng, managing outreach and writing biographical entries; Black Music Making at Michigan (forthcoming) under Dr. Kira Thurman, performing archival research and data visualization; and Global Rings Improvisation (forthcoming) under Dr. Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, providing a pedagogical application to the anthology as well as the afterword. Cedric has also worked closely under Dr. Charles Hiroshi Garrett and Dr. Naomi André.

In addition to scholarship, Cedric plays trumpet, is an aspiring conductor, and enjoys collecting CDs both new and old. He has a secondary research interest in campanology and is a novice carillon player; he has visited 11 different carillons across North America and performed on 3!