Francesca Brittan

Francesca Brittan is an Assistant Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University, specializing in 19th-century music, aesthetics, and popular music studies. She holds a PhD from Cornell University (2007) and served as a Research Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge (2006–2008). Her research explores Romantic-era melodrama, late-18th-century traditions, and the intersection of music with literary and scientific discourses.

Brittan’s scholarly work includes articles in the Journal of Popular Music Studies and the collection On Bathos (2009). She has received the Chalmers Award for performers and collaborated at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Patrick Ayrton and Bart van Oort. Her performances of Romantic-era melodrama have been showcased across Europe and North America.

Recent publications include Berlioz and the Pathological Fantastic (2006) and a forthcoming article in JAMS on Microscopic Hearing. She also edited Jean-Etienne Soubre’s Sinfonie fantastique.