Elissa Guralnick, Professor Emerita, holds degrees in English literature: a PhD from Yale University, and an AB and AM from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the College of Music in 2007, she taught literature in CU’s Department of English, as well as expository writing in the University Writing Program, which she co-directed from 1985 to 2001. Through the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program, she has held writing workshops for over 140 CU faculty in all disciplines.
In the College of Music, Guralnick has worked closely with graduate students on the academic projects required for their degrees. She has guided PhD students from the early stages of writing a dissertation proposal to preparing the final draft. For MM and DMA students, she has developed strategies that enable them to access, on the page, the same connections to music that animate their performances on stage. She is preparing a book about these strategies entitled Performing on the Page: Finding and Expressing the You-of-It in Writing about Music.
Guralnick has written for both general and academic audiences on topics ranging from law and medicine to poetry and drama. Among her publications are “The Musical Dimension,” a chapter on Schoenberg, Beckett, and Cage (among others) from her book Sight Unseen: Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard, and Other Contemporary Dramatists on Radio (Ohio University Press, 1996), and “ ‘Ah, Clara, I Am Not Worthy of Your Love’; Re-Reading Frauenliebe und Leben, the Poetry and the Music,” Music & Letters 87:4 (winter 2006) 580-605.
Guralnick’s essay on Frauenliebe forms the basis for “Clara’s Gift,” a theater piece devised by Elizabeth Mansfield and presented in 2008 as a special event for Leeds Lieder, a biennial international festival of art song. Her awards include a fellowship from the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation at Brown University and a BFA Teaching Award from CU Boulder.