Dr. Rachel Bergman is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at George Mason University.  In addition to teaching theory and aural skills courses, she is co-founder and coach of the Mason Modern Music Ensemble (m3e), George Mason’s contemporary music group.  She earned her PhD in music theory from Yale University (2001) and completed her undergraduate degree in Music and Mathematics at Skidmore College (1992), where she was the recipient of a Filene Music Scholarship.  Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the works of Austro-Hungarian composer Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), a member of Schoenberg’s circle who was killed in the Holocaust, and she is currently working on a book on the same topic.  Dr. Bergman’s article “Creativity in Captivity: Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis,” published in The Opera Journal (June 2005), won the National Opera Association’s 19th annual scholarly paper competition.  Dr. Bergman has presented papers on Ullmann’s music at numerous national and international conferences, including the Society for Music Theory, the National Opera Association, the Harvard-Lyrica Dialogues, the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, the International Conference of the Society of Music Analysis, and national and international conferences of the College Music Society.