Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia Honors graduate Daniel Gough has been awarded a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education to support his doctoral studies in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago this fall. Gough, who also was a UGA Foundation Fellow, earned his bachelor’s degrees in music performance (clarinet) and history in spring 2006.
“Danny is a remarkable person, with an extraordinary passion for understanding people through music,” said David S. Williams, director of UGA’s Honors Program and the Foundation Fellows Program.
The Javits Fellowship Program, named for the late U.S. Senator for his support of education and the arts, provides financial assistance to outstanding students who are pursuing doctoral or M.F.A. studies in selected fields of arts, humanities and social sciences. Gough was chosen in the area of music performance, theory, composition and literature.
“I am highly honored that the Department of Education and the Javits Fellowship Program have recognized me on a national level not only for my work up to this point, but also my potential to contribute to the discipline of music in the future,” said Gough, who is from Pace, Fla.
As a UGA undergraduate, Gough took advantage of the many travel-study opportunities offered through the Foundation Fellowship, the university’s premier undergraduate scholarship for academically outstanding students. He visited more than 20 countries, including a semester in Brazil where he learned Portuguese and conducted field research on the music of Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion. Under the guidance of UGA music professor and research mentor Jean Kidula, Gough presented this project at the national conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2005.
“Daniel is an effective, diligent and highly independent researcher,” said Susan Thomas, a professor of music and women’s studies, who became familiar with Gough’s research when he took some of her graduate-level courses. “He has an intense interest in Latin America and is very focused on working with this area. Daniel demonstrates one of the more important attributes of a successful researcher-an awareness and knowledge of his own subjectivity and cultural context.”
Gough’s interest in Latin American music and culture developed further as he pursued his second degree in history and a certificate in Latin American and Caribbean studies. For his Honors thesis under research mentor and history professor Thomas Whigham, Gough investigated Brazil’s involvement in World War II and how the war impacted Brazilian society. For his efforts, Gough received the Outstanding Honors Student in the Humanities award from the Honors Program before he graduated.
“Daniel has a wide perspective on the world and is extraordinarily receptive to new ideas,” said Dorothea Link, a professor of music at UGA, of her former student. “He is equally comfortable engaging in academic inquiry, performing on his clarinet, or traveling to remote parts of the world just to experience life there.”
Since graduating from UGA, Gough has been working towards a master’s degree in music performance at Florida State University.
For more information on the Javits Fellowship Program, see http://www.ed.gov/programs/jacobjavits/index.html.
For more information on UGA’s Honors Program, see http://www.uga.edu/honors.