Marie Sumner Lott

Candidate statement

Marie Sumner Lott (PhD, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 2008) is an Associate Professor of Music at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Sumner Lott’s research investigates the musical cultures of nineteenth-century Europe with a focus on the composer Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries. She is the author of The Social Worlds of Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music (University of Illinois Press, 2015) and numerous articles in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals. Her 2012 article on Brahms’s Op. 51 string quartets, published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association (U.K.), won ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award for outstanding writing about concert music. Her current research project focuses on Romantic Medievalism in the music of Brahms and his affiliates; travel to Germany for archival work on this project was supported by a GSU Research Initiation Grant and a Provost’s Faculty Fellowship grant in 2016-17. Dr. Sumner Lott has participated in several GSA meetings as a presenter, panelist, and seminar member. She has experience serving in leadership positions within similar academic organizations, including on the Executive Board of the American Brahms Society (2015-present, Treasurer), the Executive Council of the American Musicological Society (2017-20, Nominating Committee chair in 2020), and within the South-Central Chapter of the AMS (Secretary-Treasurer, 2013-19).