Chris Jenkins, viola

At Oberlin Conservatory, Christopher Jenkins is the Associate Dean for Academic Support; the Conservatory Liaison to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology. He teaches courses on hip-hop analysis and the racial politics of classical music. He is earning a DMA in viola performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a PhD in Musicology from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), where his work focuses on African-American musical aesthetics. Before coming to Oberlin, he was Deputy Director and instructor of viola and violin at the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Ramallah, West Bank. Alongside music theorist Philip Ewell, Chris is a cofounder of the Theorizing African American Music conference, held at CWRU in 2022, UC Denver’s College of Arts and Media in fall 2023, and Emory University in spring 2025. Chris is the winner of several awards for scholarship and music performance, including the Cleveland Orchestra’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Service in the Arts Award; the Music Settlement’s Ida Mercer Community Service Award; Karamu House’s “Room in the House” Fellowship; CWRU’s Adel Heinrich Award for Excellence in Musicological Research; the American Society for Aesthetics’ Irene Chayes “New Voices” award; the American Viola Society’s David Dalton Research Competition; and as third-place laureate in the Sphinx Competition. In 2023, his first book, Assimilation v. Integration in Music Education, was published by Routledge Press and the College Music Society. In 2024, his first solo recording, of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Blue/s Forms, will be released by the American Viola Society, and his chamber group Linking Legacies will release its debut recording on Innova Records. His alma maters include Harvard University, Columbia University, New England Conservatory, and the Manhattan School of Music.