People

These are the people that make the Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music.

Agustina Checa – Director

Agustina Checa (she/her/ella) is an ethnomusicologist working at the intersection of popular music and media studies and the director of the Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music (HISAM) at the Graduate Center. She studies music technologies, material culture, value, and the infrastructures that sustain independent music in South America. Her book project builds on a decade-long involvement with independent labels that produce and circulate cassette tapes across Argentina. Her most recent ethnographic endeavor is with independent labels that produce vinyl reissue albums in Lima, Peru. Directing HISAM, Checa pushes for diversifying the study of American music by promoting cutting-edge scholarship and organizing public events. She is also the managing director of American Music Review.

Maurice Restrepo – Graduate Assistant

Maurice Restrepo is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he also holds advanced certificates in Women & Gender Studies and Critical Theory. His research interests include jazz studies, gender and sexuality studies, critical studies in men and masculinities, and Afro-diasporic musical traditions from the Americas and the circum-Caribbean. Maurice’s dissertation investigates the constructions, understandings, and negotiations of masculinities among early-career jazz musicians in New York City, applying an intersectional lens to examine the interlocking relationships between masculinity and gender, race, sex and sexuality, class, age, politics, and geography. He is currently a Graduate Fellow at the H. Wiley Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music (HISAM) and serves as Managing Editor for the institute’s publication, American Music Review.