Professor Kruckenberg has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Musicology at the University of Oregon since 2007. She has received numerous awards and grants including a Fulbright Award, the American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award, and a faculty research grant from the Center for the Study of Women in Society for research on this current project. Her publications are numerous and include more than ten peer reviewed articles or book chapters as well as her forthcoming volume New Sources for Proper Tropes: 11th-16th Centuries.

The project that the Fellowship supported examines several case studies of specific women cantors in German-speaking lands throughout the Middle Ages. Most of the seven chapters in the monograph present case studies on the musical practices of individuals and communities. Kruckenberg also studies the discourse – both medieval and modern – on the relationship between women religious and sacred song to provide a framework for understanding the material evidence. This study illuminates nearly seven centuries of women’s religious practices, filling in several lacunae in our understanding of this rich history.

The Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship is a nationally-focused private fund created by fellow medievalists and admirers of Dr. Wheeler and administered by the non-profit The Dallas Foundation. It provides financial assistance to women medievalists throughout the nation who are close to completing a significant work of research that will fulfill a professional promotion requirement–and may help them break through the “glass ceiling.” Women are much more likely than men to “stand still” in the course of their academic career and to be “caught in the middle” of the promotion ladder. Current analyses affirm that this distortion still persists in academic promotion. Our Fellowships aim at placing more women scholars at the top scholarly tier.

A special feature of the Fellowships is the designation of a mentor who is responsible for reading the work-in-progress of the Fellow and for offering feedback, constructive criticism, and encouragement. Professor Kruckenberg’s mentor for this project is Anne Yardley, retired Associate Professor of Music and Associate Academic Dean at Drew Theological school and author of Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries (Palgrave, 2006) as well as numerous articles on women’s religious music.