Prof. Agnew's research focuses on eighteenth-century music discourse, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European and Pacific travel writing, postcolonial theory, and historical re-enactment. Her teaching interests include German opera and writings about music, travel, and eighteenth-century German racial discourse. Vanessa Agnew has held research fellowships at the Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar, Humboldt-Universität and the Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung (Potsdam), the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research and the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich), and the Graduiertenkolleg 'Reiseliteratur und Kulturanthropologie' at the Universität Paderborn. She was a participant consultant in the BBC2/History Channel series The Ship, which retraced Cook's 1768 voyage to the South Seas. She is a founding member of the Reenactment History Group and coeditor of a new series on historical reenactment published by Palgrave. Her award-winning book, Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2008), is a study of Anglo-German debates about the power of music (ca.1760-1810), which traces the central role of travel and cross-cultural encounters in transforming musical thought. For more about the book, click here.

Reviews of Enlightenment Orpheus: H-Net, The Journal of Pacific History

Her recent book projects deal with historical reenactment, Georg Forster, and eighteenth-century natural history. For interviews with Vanessa Agnew, type "Cityscape" in the National Public Radio Search box, then choose episode 7 October 2006; and KCUR Kansas City Public Radio's Up to Date, prod. Stephen Steigman, 31 October 2007.

• Enlightenment Orpheus. The Power of Music in Other Worlds. New York: Oxford University Press (2008). Winner of the Kenshur Book Prize for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2009
  Journal of Pacific History Review, H-Net Review
• "History's Affective Turn: Historical Reenactment and Its Work in the Present," Rethinking History 11, no. 3 (2007): 299-312. Link to Article
• "Listening to Others: Eighteenth-Century Encounters in Polynesia and Their Reception in German Musical Thought," Eighteenth-Century Studies 41, no. 2 (2008): 165-188. Link to Article
• "The Colonialist Beginnings of Comparative Musicology." Germany's Colonial Pasts: An Anthology in Memory of Susanne Zantop, ed. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005). Link to Article
• "Introduction: What is Reenactment?" Criticism Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer 2004): 327-39. Special issue on 'Extreme and Sentimental History,' co-ed. Vanessa Agnew and Jonathan Lamb. Link to Article
• "Pacific Island Encounters and the German Invention of Race," in Islands: Histories and Representations, ed. Rod Edmond and Vanessa Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 81-94. Link to Review
• "What Can Reenactment Tell Us About the Past?" BBCi History, September 2002. Link to Program Archive