Dr. Cara Schreffler, Assistant Professor of Music, will be speaking this coming June at the 13th Annual International Conference for Religion and Spirituality in Society in Athens, Greece. She will be discussing how the music of indigenous Andean cultures reflects their cosmology and how music has helped them preserve their beliefs and cultural norms despite outside influences, including colonization and modernization, and create syncretic religious practices.

Dr. Schreffler also has a paper forthcoming in the peer-reviewed journal Crosscurrents, which publishes scholarly works on the intersections of society, religion, education, and the arts. Her paper is titled “Our Sounds Reach the Other World” and discusses the use of musical instruments for religious, spiritual, and ritual purposes in cultures around the world.

After earning her Master of Music from University of New Mexico, Dr. Schreffler received her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder.