Stephen Hudson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
Occidental College
Email: shudson@oxy.edu
Stephen S. Hudson is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Occidental College, after previously teaching at Northwestern University (where he received a PhD in Music Theory & Cognition) and the University of Richmond. He is an emerging expert on metal music, drawing on rhythm cognition studies and cognitive metaphor theory to understand how fans use headbanging and other embodied listening practices to coordinate with drum patterns, navigate song form, and create experiences of intensity and impact. His first book, titled Heaviness in Metal Music, is currently under contract with Oxford University Press. He has published articles in recent issues of Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, Metal Music Studies, and Current Musicology, as well as a chapter in the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Metal Music Composition. Stephen is also Vice President of the Pacific Southwest chapter of the American Musicological Society. Throughout his schooling he was trained as a classical cellist, and in his free time he continues to play historically-informed baroque music on period instruments.
