Gina Bombola

Instructor II in Musicology
Music
Jarvis Hall 324

g.bombola@tcu.edu | 817-257-4841

Education

Ph.D.-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MA-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MM-University of Nevada, Las Vegas 
BM-Vanderbilt University

Courses Taught

MUSI 10033: Survey of Jazz and Pop Music
MUSI 10053: Survey of Music—Honors
MUSI 10053: Survey of Western Art Music
MUSI 20613: History of Western Music I
MUSI 30602: World Music for Music Majors
MUSI 30623: History of Western Music III
MUSI 30613: History of Western Music II
MUSI 30613: History of Western Music II—Honors
MUSI 30970: Directed Study in Music
MUSI 40000: Musical Theatre and American Politics—Honors Colloquium
MUSI 40003: Senior Honors Research Project
MUSI 50493: Music in the U.S.
MUSI 60500: Seminar in Musicology: Film Music and Identity
MUSI 60613: Music Bibliography and Research Methods
MUSI 60800: Seminar in Music Theory: Do You Believe in Life After Love?
MUSI 70980: Thesis I
UNLF 10211: Introduction to University Life

Areas of Focus

Film music, vocality studies, opera, American popular culture

“The Romantic Nightingale: Jenny Lind in Film,” Opera and Popular Culture after 1900, Fort Worth, TX, February 2020

“Music in the Jungle: ‘Africa’ in 1930s Hollywood Film,” Mapping Music History, Boston, MA, October 2019

“Leftist Politics and Pro-Russian Sentiments in MGM’s Thousands Cheer (1943),” Society for American Music, Kansas City, MO, March 2018

“Turning a Prima Donna into a ‘Female Tarzan’: Hollywood, Opera, and Race in Hitting a New High (1937),” American Musicological Society, Rochester, NY, November 2017

“Cold Voices and Warm Bodies: Gender, Technology, and the Racialized ‘Other’ in Hollywood Musicals, 1934 ̶ 1945,” Feminist Theory and Music Conference, San Francisco, July 2017

“Piecing Together a Film’s Production and Reception: ‘Alternative’ Archival Sources and Columbia Pictures’ One Night of Love (1934),” Sources and Archives in Screen Sound Studies Symposium, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK, June 2017

“Turning Prima Donnas into ‘Female Tarzans’: Opera and Race in RKO Pictures’ Hitting a New High (1937),” Music and the Moving Image, New York, May 2017

“Domesticizing Opera: Adolescent Voices in Classic Hollywood Cinema,” The Society for American Music, Montreal, Canada, March 2017

“What’s in a Name? From There’s Magic in Music to The Hard-Boiled Canary: Music Appreciation and Marketing in the Movies,” The Society for American Music, Boston, MA, March 2016

“‘Today’s Songbird Must Have Optical Appeal’: Hollywood Constructs the Prima Donna Ideal,” Feminism Here and Now: An Interdisciplinary Conversation, Chapel Hill, NC, November 2015

“‘Heavyweight Diva is Passé’: Hollywood’s Influence on Opera’s Prima Donna,” The 22nd International Conference of Europeanists, Paris, France, July 2015

“‘Art is Art—but Heft is Heft’: How Hollywood Fashioned the Modern Opera Diva in One Night of Love (1934),” The Society for American Music, Sacramento, CA, March 2015

“Avoid Leitmotifs in the Films—Unless It Happens to be a Psychological Melodrama: Aaron Copland and The Heiress (1949),” Aaron Copland and the American Cultural Imagination Symposium, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, August 2014

“Aaron Copland.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies. Ed. Krin Gabbard. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

“Respectability, Prestige, and the Whiteness of Opera in American Popular Entertainment from 1890 to 1937,” The Musical Quarterly (June 2022): 1-46. Co-authored article with Kristen M. Turner.

“Searching for a Fresh Point of View: Aaron Copland, Identity, and The Heiress (1949),” Journal of Musicology 35, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 368-396.

“From There’s Magic in Music to The Hard-Boiled Canary: Promoting ‘Good Music’ in Pre-War Musical Films,” Journal of the Society for American Music 12, no. 2 (May 2018): 151-178.

“World War II: Swinging and Singing,” in Music and War in the United States, edited by Sarah M. Kraaz (London: Routledge, 2018), 162-177.

Film Review of Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), Journal of the Society for American Music 12, no. 3 (August 2018): 380-382.

Clark Society Endowed Faculty Award, Texas Christian University (Nominated, Spring 2022)

Honors Faculty Partner, John V. Roach Honors College, Texas Christian University (2021 ̶ 2023)

Honors Laureate Mentor, John V. Roach Honors College, Texas Christian University (2021)

Glen Haydon Award for an Outstanding Dissertation in Musicology, Department of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017)

Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Completion Fellowship (American Musicological Society, 2016 ̶ 2017)

James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles Library (University of California, Los Angeles, Summer 2014)

James W. Pruett Summer Research Fellowship in Music at the Library of Congress (Summer 2012)

American Musicological Society (AMS)

Pi Kappa Lambda Honors Society

Society for American Music (SAM)