About Cana

Cana (KAY-nuh) is a musicologist, writer, and environmentalist. She is a PhD Candidate in Historical Musicology at Harvard University. Originally from Atlanta, she received her Bachelor’s in Music and French Studies from Emory University. Her undergraduate studies culminated in an Honors thesis about music, poetry, and linguistic nationalism in fin-de-siecle France and Belgium. While working on this project, she was part of an inaugural group of undergraduate fellows with the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry and the Halle Institute.

Currently, Cana’s work revolves around climate change and environmentalism. Across her research and teaching, she grapples with how to engage with music and sound during a time of global climate crises. Her dissertation elucidates the musics and sounds among plants and humans in the contexts of 19th-century French art song, online plant mom culture, and in the legacies of Black garden cultures. Her archival research has been generously supported by Harvard’s Center for European Studies and the Lurcy Foundation. To accompany her scholarship, she pursues other writing projects in the form of short stories and Substack reflections on life as a junior scholar. When she isn’t writing, Cana also enjoys distance running, choral singing, and freestyling plant-based recipes.

For a more detailed list of her engagements, please visit the CV page or contact Cana.