Overview
Nic Vigilante is a PhD Candidate in Music & Sound Studies and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, where their ethnographic research revolves around questions of performance, virtuality, liveness, and queer Asian American aesthetics. Nic works across ethnomusicology, Asian American studies, gender studies, media studies, performance studies, and the digital humanities to study the performative and affective aspects of spaces outside of “real life.” Their three main areas of focus are queer Asian American nightlife in Los Angeles; music in virtual worlds; and the role of sound and music in esports.
Nic has taught, presented, and published on topics ranging from lo-fi to Asian American night markets, queer K-pop fandoms to Fortnite concerts, and sonic weaponry to the music of League of Legends esports. Their recent publications can be read in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies and the Journal of Extreme Anthropology. Nic has presented papers at the American Studies Association, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Association for Asian American Studies, and the North American Conference on Video Game Music, as well as additional conferences on Asian American music, video game music, ethnomusicology, and ethnographic approaches to virtual reality.
Nic’s research and writing have been funded by the Cornell’s Society for the Humanities, Media Studies program, Department of Music, and Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. They were a member of the inaugural cohort of Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellows (2023-24). Nic has received Cornell’s John James Blackmore Prize and Dean’s Excellence Fellowship; the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Ric Trimillos Travel Award; Oberlin College’s Norm Robertson Prize in Queer Studies and Friends of the Library Research Award; and the American Chemical Society’s Jeffrey Madura Outstanding Research Award. They currently sit on the board of the American Musicological Society’s Ludomusicology Study Group.
As a violist, conductor, baritone, and baroque violinist and violist, Nic has performed in venues including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Chicago’s Symphony Hall, Tanglewood, the Seoul Opera House, and the Beijing Concert Hall. Before coming to graduate school, Nic worked in computational and physical chemistry; their work can be read in the Journal of Chemical Crystallography and Acta Crystallographica C.
Nic holds a BM in Viola Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, a BA in Chemistry from Oberlin College, and an MA in Music from Cornell University.