Research Interests
A specialist in the musical styles of Bulgaria, the Balkans, and the NIS (especially Russia and the Republic of Georgia), Donna Buchanan's scholarly interests include music as symbolic communication, music in aesthetic systems, music and power relations, music and cosmology, and music and social identity. Her additional teaching areas include ethnomusicological methodologies, ethnography, Mediterranean traditional and art musics, the musical cultures of indigenous peoples, and Russian and East European classical music, particularly Bartok, Musorgsky, and Shostakovich. Her articles have appeared in major journals of ethnomusicology, musicology, and East European studies. A faculty affiliate of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC) since 1998 and its Director from 2005-08, Professor Buchanan also established Balkanalia, the University of Illinois Balkan Music Ensemble, which performs regularly under the auspices of both REEEC and the School of Music.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, School of Music
Affiliate, Anthropology
Professor, Women & Gender in Global Perspectives
Professor, Russian, East European and Eurasian Center
Professor, Center for Global Studies
Professor, European Union Center
Professor, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Recent Publications
Buchanan, D. A. (2024). POPULAR CULTURE AND PANDEMIC POLITICS: Musically mitigating COVID-19 in 2020 Bulgaria. In The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans (pp. 265-280). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003328162-21
Buchanan, D. A. (2019). Review: M. Beissinger, S. Rădulescu, and A. Giurchescu's (eds.) Manele in Romania: Cultural Expression and Social Meaning in Balkan Popular Music. Anthropology of East Europe Review, 36(1), 92-95.
Buchanan, D. A. (2017). Armenia aeterna: Commemorative heritage in sound, sculpture, and movement from Bulgaria's Armenian diaspora. In M. Frihammar, & H. Silverman (Eds.), Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice (pp. 147-163). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315440200-11
Buchanan, D. A. (2017). Bells, Bellmaking and Festival Practice as Entrepreneurial Heritage and Markers of Place in Pirin-Macedonia, Bulgaria. Balkanistica, 30(2), 59-83.
Buchanan, D. A. (2017). Soccer, popular music and national consciousness in post-state-socialist Bulgaria, 1994-96. In Non-Western Popular Music (pp. 35-61). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315090450-3