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Eric Schmidt

Academic Division: Arts & Humanities
Eric J. Schmidt (he/him) researches how people remake social worlds through musical and sonic expression in northwest Africa's Sahel and Sahara regions. His interdisciplinary scholarship engages work in economic ethnomusicology, the anthropology of value, African studies, and media studies. Informed by ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Niger, Mali, and the United States, his research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright, and the West African Research Association.

His book project examines shifting value regimes in the Tuareg music economy since the 1990s, a period when subversive guitar songs emerged as a crucial vehicle for mobilizing Tuareg rebellions in Mali and Niger. It considers how artists, fans, and cultural institutions manage the tensions between this political legacy and the new material possibilities afforded by Tuareg guitar's global popularity, attending to questions of precarity, intellectual property, caste, and media circulation.

Prior to joining Babson, he taught at Southern Methodist University and served as Assistant Director of the Boston University African Studies Center. He earned his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Academic Degrees

  • Ph D, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • MA, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • BA, American University

Awards & Honors

  • 2024 — ACLS Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies
  • 2023 — Postdoctoral Fellowship, West African Research Association
  • 2017 — African Libraries Student Paper Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology
  • 2016 — Fulbright US Student Fellowship, US Department of State

Publications

Journal Articles

  • Schmidt, E.J. (2020). Arid Fidelity, Reluctant Capitalists: Salvage, Curation, and the Circulation of Tuareg Music on Independent Record Labels. Ethnomusicology Forum. Vol: 28, Issue: 3, Page: 260–282. link

Book Chapters

  • Schmidt, E.J. (2025). Playing with Class: Honor, Griotisme, and Professional Artists in the Tuareg Music Economy: Music as Cultural Text: Performance Traditions in West Africa and its Diasporas. Palgrave Macmillan.

Presentations

  • Rebels, Authors, Compatriots: Exilic Space and the Making of Popular Music in Niger Schmidt, E. Walter Rodney Seminar, Boston, MA (2025)
  • À l’écoute de la création de la musique populaire nomade au Niger [Listening for the Making of Nomadic Popular Music in Niger] Schmidt, E. , E. Conférence Performative, Niamey, Niger (2025)
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