Dana Plank is an independent scholar and remote lecturer for University of Hartford and The Ohio State University. Her work focuses on intersections of music and representations of identity, particularly video game sound and gender, sexuality, and disability. . She is co-editor The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music: Making Movement Sing with Lisa Scoggin, set to appear in April 2023 from Routledge, and has a second project under contract with Routledge entitled Gender and Sexuality in Video Game Sound co-edited with Karen Cook and Michael Austin. In addition to her scholarship, she remains active as a violinist, chamber musician, and professional transcriptionist and arranger, and she is active on Twitch, co-hosting a weekly stream on video-game music with Ryan Thompson, Julianne Grasso, and Karen Cook on Thursdays at 9 p.m. Eastern at twitch.tv/bardicknowledge, as well as a weekly stream on Fridays at 2pm Eastern on her own channel at twitch.tv/musicologess entitled “Kudomusicology: A Ludomusicology Literature Review,” highlighting scholarship and featuring interviews with the authors in the field.

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"'Here Begin Songs of the Heart's Enjoying':

Translating Passion to Scholarship"

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In this keynote address, I will reflect back on my journey as a graduate student, bringing together so many distinct and disparate strands of academic interests into a cohesive, rigorous whole. I remember wondering how I would find my place in the academic landscape, how I would find my voice, how I was ever going to write a dissertation when I hadn't even written anything longer than a seminar paper in the past--with a masters degree in violin performance instead of musicology, my transition from student to scholar was fraught with questions and doubts about how to become what I had dreamed. To this end, I will revisit a beloved book from my childhood and examine how my unique amalgam of passions, skills, and experiences came full circle in 2020, coalescing into a chapter on Egyptian musical exoticism and early video games that remains one of my favorite projects to date.