Dr. Liz Przybylski

Ethnomusicologist, Author, Educator, Musician ​

Bio

Dr. Liz Przybylski (pronunciation) is an ethnomusicologist and pop music scholar working in hip hop and electronic music in the US and Canada. Dr. Przybylski is a Full Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Riverside. A graduate of Bard College (BA) and Northwestern University (MA, PhD), Liz’s research appears in Ethnomusicology, Journal of Borderlands Studies, and IASPM Journal, among others. Dr. Przybylski has presented research nationally and internationally, including at the Society for Ethnomusicology, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Feminist Theory and Music, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and International Council for Traditional Music World Conferences. Recent and forthcoming publications analyze how the sampling of heritage music in Indigenous hip hop contributes to dialogues about cultural change in urban areas. Dr. Przybylski has also published on popular music pedagogy. Liz was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. Liz’s most recent book Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams was published in July 2023 (NYU Press). This follows Liz’s first book, Hybrid Ethnography: Online, Offline, and In Between (SAGE Publications, 2020) which develops an innovative model of hybrid on- and off-line ethnography for the analysis of expressive culture. In addition to university teaching, Liz has taught adult and pre-college learners at the American Indian Center in Chicago and the Concordia Language Villages program of Concordia College in Bemidji. On the radio, Liz hosted the world music show “Continental Drift” on WNUR in Chicago and has conducted interviews with musicians for programs including “At The Edge of Canada: Indigenous Research” on CJUM in Winnipeg. Dr. Przybylski served as the Media Reviews Editor for the journal American Music, the President of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Southern California and Hawaii Chapter, and on the Society for Ethnomusicology Council.