Biography

Emilie Hurst is an early career musicologist, having defended her PhD in Communications and Culture at York and Toronto Metropolitan University in 2023. Her SSHRC-funded dissertation explored contemporary Wagner fandom, through extensive interviews with members of the Toronto Wagner Society. These findings are analyzed through a dual lens of fan studies and cultural techniques, with which this dissertation makes two principal moves: first, to highlight how fandom of high culture is different in nature, not in kind to fandom of popular culture; second, to propose a networked model of fandom, one which conceptualizes fandom as a dynamic assemblage of audience, media and text.
She continues to be interested in music reception and the intersections of media studies and music. In addition to serving as a TA this year at York, she also teaches course in media studies at Sheridan College.