Kira Dralle

Kira Dralle is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Dietrich School, specializing in jazz and popular music studies with a focus on archival work and reparative histories. She holds a PhD in Cultural Musicology from UC Santa Cruz and has held roles including Visiting Scholar at the University for Music and Performing Arts Graz (Austria), where she engaged with the Dietrich Schulz-Köhn jazz archive. Her research examines silenced histories of Black jazz musicians in 20th-century Europe, interrogating how nationalism and authoritarianism shaped jazz narratives.

• Education: PhD in Cultural Musicology (UC Santa Cruz), Visiting Scholar (University for Music and Performing Arts Graz)
• Key Projects: Book project on “White-Hot Jazz” analyzing transatlantic jazz historiography; research on Joséphine Baker’s superstar status in WWII contexts
• Engagement: Lecture series in Europe, curation of Black Sound Symposium events, radio collaborations

Her work bridges historical ethnomusicology, visual culture, and political philosophy, aiming to recover marginalized narratives. Current projects explore how authoritarian regimes influenced jazz’s global identity while complicating contemporary canonization. She has published in Jazz Studies, Jazzforschung/Jazz Research, and Jazz Research News, with an upcoming book project.

Awards include the prestigious UC President’s Dissertation Fellowship. Dralle also critiques artistic representations of trauma, as seen in her blog post analyzing Sia’s “The Greatest” and its ethical implications in memorializing tragedies like Pulse Nightclub.