Rate My Professor Juan Eduardo Wolf

Juan Eduardo Wolf is an Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Arts and Culture faculty at the University of Oregon's School of Music and Dance, promoted to this position in Fall 2019. He holds a PhD in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University (2013), an MA in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University (2007), an MS in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University (1995), and a BS in Chemical Engineering and BA in Art Studio from the University of Notre Dame (1993). Wolf serves as Director of Latin American Studies, Coordinator of the UO World Music Series and Ethnomusicology, core faculty in the Folklore Program and Public Culture Program, and member of the advisory boards for the Latinx Studies Program and the Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses including Music in World Cultures, Introduction to Ethnomusicology, Musical Instruments of the World, Music of the Americas, Decolonizing Music, and world music ensembles such as Los Wallatas (Andean music) and Puerto Rican Music Ensemble.

In his research, Wolf investigates how music-dance facilitates human self-understanding and representation, focusing on expressions of historically dispossessed Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. His fieldwork involves Afro-descendant and Aymara communities in northern Chile, with ongoing projects in Puerto Rico and lowland Bolivia, emphasizing decolonial thought, ethnography, and folkloristics. Key publications include the book Styling Blackness in Chile: Music and Dance in the African Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2019), the chapter “Dismantling Coloniality via the Vocabulary of Afro-Chilean and Afro-Puerto Rican Music-Dance” in Améfrica in Letters: Literary Interventions from Mexico to the Southern Cone (Vanderbilt University Press, 2022), and “Un Tumbe Ch’ixi: Incorporating Afro-descendant Ideas into an Andean Anticolonial Methodology” in Theorizing Folklore from the Margins: Critical and Ethical Approaches (Indiana University Press, 2021). Awards received include the 2018 UO Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies Faculty Collaboration Grant, 2018 Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Grant, and 2016 VPRI Completion Fellowship from the Oregon Humanities Center. As a performer, he contributes as percussionist, guitarist, vocalist, and composer in various ensembles.