Professor Burke’s research addresses jazz and popular music in the United States and the role of colonialism and imperialism in the history of music in the global South. He teaches courses on such topics as the history of jazz and popular music, music of the African diaspora, and the methods and theories of ethnomusicology.
Patrick Burke received his B.A. in music at the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 2004, he has been a professor of music at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on such topics as the history of jazz and popular music, music of the African diaspora, and the methods and theories of ethnomusicology. Professor Burke has served as the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies and Head of Musicology.
Prof. Burke’s research centers on jazz and popular music in the United States, with a focus on the connections between music’s performance and reception and the formation of racial ideology. His work has been supported by fellowships from the American Musicological Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Social Science Research Council, and the Center for the Humanities at WUSTL. Prof. Burke is the author of Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (University of Chicago Press, 2008). His second book, Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2021. He is currently beginning work on a new project on music, colonialism, and the Norwegian shipping industry during the “Age of Empire.”
Professor Burke is also director and writer of the digital humanities project Music and Racial Segregation in St. Louis: Uncovering the Sources (http://digital.wustl.edu/musicandsegregation/).