Max Katz

Max Katz is a Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the College of William & Mary. His research focuses on North Indian classical music, combining ethnographic methods with historical analysis. He has published extensively on topics including Hindustani music history, cultural memory, and the socio-economic dimensions of musical instrument production. Current projects include tracing the Purab Baj instrumental repertoire and analyzing the commercial instrument trade in North India.

His teaching portfolio includes courses on Indian music, jazz history, and the intersection of music with colonialism and race. He holds affiliations with Anthropology, American Studies, and Africana Studies departments through cross-listed courses such as 'Music and Colonialism' and 'Race and Music.'

• Awards & Grants: Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship (201?), Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies Grant, American Musicological Society Grant
• Key Research Projects:
  • Lineage of Loss: Reinterpreting North Indian music history through apprenticeship narratives
  • Endangered Melodies: Analyzing the Purab Baj instrumental corpus
  • Sitar Business: Ethnographic study of instrument manufacturing ecosystems

His work bridges musicology with interdisciplinary approaches, incorporating Marxist theory and postcolonial critique to examine cultural production and preservation. Katz's research has been featured in leading journals such as Ethnomusicology Forum and Ethnomusicology.