Jonathan Leal

Graduation Year
2020
Jonathan Leal
In brief, Jonathan studies musical practice, literary thinking, and cultural politics from WWII to the present. To do so, he draws on his training in music, literature, and cultural studies to attend to sound, text, and context, taking special interest in theories of race, listening, notation, affinity, and multimedial composition. He also maintains a focus on U.S.-Mexico border histories, youth cultures, and concept/process modeling.
 
In his current project, he follows the lives and works of four writer-musicians in the immediate post-WWII years, theorizing out of their musical output, literary activity, and political engagement novel approaches to enfranchisement, historiography, and the creation of rhetorical form. 
 
Before beginning at Stanford in 2014, Jonathan earned a B.A. and M.A. in English at the University of North Texas while working as a percussionist, music educator, and composer in the Dallas–Ft. Worth Metroplex.

Contact

Research Interests

Field of Interest
Transnational American Studies, Music Studies, Literary Criticism and Theory, Race and Ethnicity, U.S.-Mexico Border Cultures