Hannah Howard Andresen: Power and Gender in Conducting Education at Music Conservatories

Field of Study: Music Education

The overall aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between power and gender in conducting education, with a focus on the power structures that shape the learning environment at music conservatories. Through a critical analysis of the relationships that emerge between conducting professors and students, Andresen seeks to uncover how power manifests itself both as experience, as practice, and as institutional structure.

Andresen will analyze these phenomena through various theoretical perspectives on power, including Max Weber’s definition of power as the ability to carry out one’s will despite resistance, Steven Lukes’ three-dimensional model of power, and Michel Foucault’s concepts of discipline, normalization, and embodied power.

Central questions are: How does the conducting professor educate their students and how are authority, obedience, and hierarchy shaped within this educational context? What happens in the performative tension between teacher and student, and how are these actions interpreted through concepts such as the body, gender, and power? And how might a feminist approach to conducting education look?

Research Questions

1. How can rethinking power through feminist, democratic, and decolonial lenses reshape leadership in classical music?
2. What potential do feminist and critical pedagogies hold for transforming the power dynamics of conductor education?
3. How do power relations within conservatory education contribute to the marginalization of female conductors?