Neil Lerner is a specialist in the history and analysis of music and cinema, Neil Lerner (B.A., summa cum laude, English, music, Transylvania University; A.M., Ph.D., musicology, Duke University) has published and presented on topics including documentary film, Theodor Adorno, Joseph Carl Breil, Aaron Copland, science fiction cinema, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Virgil Thomson, Dimitri Tiomkin, and John Williams. Before coming to Davidson College, he taught as a visiting instructor at Duke University, Centre College, and the Kentucky Governor's Scholars Program. At Davidson, he teaches courses on music history, film, and the humanities. A pianist and harpsichordist, Lerner can also pinch-hit on bassoon. Recently he joined his interests in research and performance as he has begun to accompany early twentieth-century films with contemporary piano scores. He has served on the National Council of the American Musicological Society and as president of the American Musicological Society-Southeast chapter (2001-2003).

Current projects include a critical edition of Aaron Copland's score for the film, Our Town, (dir. Sam Wood, 1940) and a close study of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music for Kings Row (dir. Sam Wood, 1942).

Publications in The Musical Quarterly, The Sounds of Early Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2001), Collecting Visible Evidence (University of Minnesota Press, 1999), The Reader's Guide to Music: History, Theory, and Criticism (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999), Popular Music and Society, Film Music II (forthcoming), The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film (forthcoming), The Encyclopedia of Americans at War (forthcoming),The South Atlantic Quarterly (forthcoming), Off the Planet: Music, Sound, and Science Fiction Cinema (forthcoming), American Music (forthcoming), and Music & Letters (forthcoming). Regional, national, and international presentations, including papers for the American Musicological Society (1993, 1995, 1997, 2000), the Society for American Music (1999, 2000, 2002, 2003), the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2003), the Royal Music Association (2001), Domitor (1998), Orphans (2002), and Visible Evidence (1993, 1994, 1998).  [from Dr. Lerner's Davidson College website]