Anna Marinela Lopez

Anna Lopez is a doctoral student in Historical Musicology at The University of Texas at Austin whose research lies at the intersection of nationalism, sound studies, and film music theories to explore U.S. American identity formation through music in popular media. Her dissertation analyzes the creation of U.S. American identity through live music ensembles at the Disneyland Resort. She is the recipient of the 2022 Outstanding Graduate Student Scholarly Creative Activities and Research Award for her thesis “David Maslanka’s Symphony No. 4 and the Wind Band/Ensemble as an American Institution.” Her other research interests include American wind bands/ensembles, film music, and musical theater.

Lopez has presented her work at numerous conferences around the nation: “Me? I Loved Him: Women and Love in Hamilton: An American Musical” at the Society for American Music 51st Annual Meeting (2025); “It’s a New Soundtrack: World-Building in Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour” at Music and Moving Image XX (2024); “Dream a Fantasmic Dream: Immersion, World Building, and Nostalgia in Disneyland’s Fantasmic!” at All Ears: Music and Sound in and Beyond Disney Theme Parks (2024); “(In)Visible Strings: The Filipino American Identity in Classical Music” at the Asian Classical Music Initiative International Conference (2023); and “David Maslanka’s Symphony No. 4 and the Wind Band/Ensemble as an American Institution” at the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society Chapter Meeting (2022).

She is currently Co-President (Historical Musicology) of the Association of Graduate Ethno/Musicology Students (AGEMS) at The University of Texas at Austin and the Assistant Editor of the Journal of the Society for American Music (JSAM).

She completed her master’s degree in Music History and Literature from California State University, Fullerton (2022), where she also obtained a bachelor’s degree in Flute Performance (2020).