Maynor Honors College. He completed his Ph.D. at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 with a dissertation about pop- and rock-styled Christian worship music in American evangelicalism using ethnography, affect theory, and phenomenological approaches. More broadly, his research interests include music in religious community, liturgy and mass-media, and identity politics in American popular music. He is also an active composer throughout the Cape Fear region with recent performances by the UNCP Percussion Ensemble, Sweet Tea Shakespeare, and as part of the Cape Fear New Music Festival.