Susan McClary (Harvard PhD, 1976; Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University) teaches courses in music history, music theory, and historical performance practices. Her research focuses on the cultural criticism of music, both the European canon and contemporary popular genres. In contrast with an aesthetic tradition that treats music as ineffable and transcendent, her work engages with the signifying dimensions of musical procedures and deals with this elusive medium as a set of social practices. She is best known for her book Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (1991), which examines cultural constructions of gender, sexuality, and the body in various musical repertories, ranging from early seventeenth-century opera to the songs of Madonna.