Elizabeth Dister received her Ph.D. in music from Washington University in St. Louis in 2015. Her research focuses on French music and politics in the twentieth century, and in particular on musical representations of Joan of Arc in the 1930s and 1940s. Dister currently works at Webster University’s Faculty Development Center, where she focuses on teaching and learning issues related to student engagement and motivation.
The world that compositions about Joan of Arc evoke is filled with angels and demons, kings and clerics, bells and disembodied voices, and their musical interpretations reveal striking details about how the modern age looks back on the mysterious medieval world Joan inhabited.