Dr. Sean Atkinson

Dr. Sean Atkinson is Professor of Music, Interim Chair of Music, and Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Montevallo in Montevallo, Alabama. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Music Theory and Director of the School of Music at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Sean also served on the music faculty at the University of Texas-Arlington. He has earned both MM and PhD degrees in music theory from Florida State University and holds a BM degree in music theory and trombone performance from Furman University.

Atkinson is the author of a best-selling course for The Great Courses called Music Theory: The Foundation of Great Music. The course teaches viewers the basics of Western music theory, from note and rhythm reading, all the way through harmony, harmonic progressions, and reading lead sheets. Additionally, his research, which broadly address issues of musical meaning in multimedia contexts, has been published in numerous journals, including Music Theory Online, Indiana Theory Review, The Dutch Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory and Analysis, and Popular Music. He is also active in the growing field of video game music (ludomusicology), with presentations at the North American Conference on Video Game Music and Music and the Moving Image, and several articles and essays in edited collections on video game music.