Two Hampshire College students—Sasha Hsuczyk 10F and Phoebe Smolin 09F—are among six graduating students in the Five College consortium who will receive ethnomusicology certificates.

From East Los Angeles musical histories to the pedagogy of India’s classical music, the projects of this year’s Five College ethnomusicology certificate recipients engage with a diverse array of musical subjects across disciplines and the globe.

The six graduating students will be honored in a celebration at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 14, at the Amherst College Alumni House on Churchill Street in downtown Amherst.

Students will offer presentations on their research beginning at 2 p.m., and will be followed by Kiri Miller, an associate professor of music at Brown University. Miller, whose work focuses on popular music, interactive digital media, virtual performance, and amateur musicianship, will give a talk titled “Listening Like a Dancer,” which focuses on Dance Central, a digital game series that teaches players full-body choreography routines set to popular club music, providing real-time feedback driven by a motion-sensing camera device.

“Drawing on analysis of online discourse and interviews with players and game designers,” said Miller, “I address Dance Central as a staging ground for emergent forms of multisensory interactivity, virtual performance, and participatory culture.”

In addition to Hsuczyk and Smolin, the Five College Ethnomusicology Certificate recipients are: Anna Maria Amoroso and Rebekah Danielson from Mount Holyoke College and Katie Hoyer and Sara Loh from Smith College.

Five College certificate programs, akin to academic minors, pool the resources of multiple campuses to offer students focused study in areas campuses often cannot provide on their own. The Five College Certificate in Ethnomusicology is a program instituted in 2010 that allows students to develop a unique, multidisciplinary curriculum focused on their individual research interests. For more information on the program, visit www.fivecolleges.edu/ethnomusicology