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About Benjamin
Benjamin J. Harbert is Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, where he also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music. He joined the music faculty after receiving his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, with his doctoral research examining music in three Louisiana prisons, including the dissertation 'Doing Time: The Work of Music in Louisiana Prisons' (2010). Prior appointments include teaching fellow at UCLA, lecturer at Pomona College, and resident artist at the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County. Before academia, Harbert directed the guitar, percussion, and music theory programs at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. As a professional guitarist, he teaches courses on guitar theory, rock history, and music in American prisons.
Harbert's research investigates music's intersections with social institutions, focusing on incarceration, documentary film, international extreme metal, and Near Eastern music. His book Instrument of the State: A Century of Music in Louisiana’s Angola Prison (Oxford University Press, 2023) received the 2025 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music, the 2024 Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society, and the 2024 Portia K. Maultsby Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Other key publications include American Music Documentary: Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), co-editorship of The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2013), and articles such as 'I’ll Keep on Living After I Die: Musical Manipulation and Transcendence at Louisiana State Penitentiary' (International Journal of Community Music, 2010) and 'Only Time: Musical Means to the Personal, the Private, and the Polis at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women' (American Music, 2013). He directed the documentary Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians (2012). Harbert is an inaugural editor-in-chief of the Journal of Audiovisual Ethnomusicology (JAVEM), sponsored by the Society for Ethnomusicology and launched in 2023. In 2025, he was awarded the Ellen Koskoff Edited Volume Prize for his chapter 'Images Beyond Consent: Developing an Ethics of Ciné-Ethnomusicology' in The Routledge Companion to Ethics and Research in Ethnomusicology, proposing frameworks emphasizing dialogue, care, and mutual vulnerability in ethical filmmaking.
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