Musicologist and keyboardist at the University of Arkansas since 1982, Professor Detels received her B.A. from Colorado College (1975), and her M.A. (1979) and Ph.D. (1982) in Historical Musicology from the University of Washington in Seattle, in addition to fellowships at Cambridge University (2000-01),  and the National Endowment for the Arts summer seminars in German Romantic Criticism (1987, with Ernst Behler), Philosophy and the Histories of the Arts (1991, with Arthur Danto), and Opera: Between the Disciplines (2000, with Carolyn Abbate).   

Detels' published books include Soft Boundaries: Re-Visioning the Arts and Aesthetics in American Education (Bergin and Garvey) Music in the Western Tradition (Mayfield, 1998; rev. Brown and Benchmark, 2004; William Grant Still Studies at the University of Arkansas: A 1984 Congress Report (University of Arkansas, 1985, editor). Her articles on interdisciplinary arts, aesthetics, and late 19th-century Italian opera have appeared in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, boundary 2, ACT, the Yearbook of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts, The Opera Journal, The International Dictionary of Opera, and the Dictionary of American Philosophers. She has been a frequent speaker at national meetings of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association, the American Society for Aesthetics, the College Music Society, and the Feminist Theory and Music Symposia.  In addition, she has served as Chair of the Committee on Aesthetics in Higher Education for the American Society for Aesthetics, as board member of Gender Research in Music Education and for the on-line journal Gender, Education, Music, and Society; as Vice President and Board member of the Arkansas Music Educators Association for interdisciplinary matters, and as a member of the international Mayday Group for curricular reform in music education.

In the area of teaching, Dr. Detels has been highly active with the University of Arkansas Teaching and Faculty Support Center (TFSC) since its establishment in 1992: attending the annual Teaching Camp four times, and serving as a portfolio instructor, mentor and member of the TFSC Teaching Council. She is the winner of numerous grants and awards for teaching, including the 1993 Chancellor-Mentor Teacher award, four Fulbright College Teaching Innovation grants (1995-98, and a 1999 WISE award for "Women in Significant Endeavors” in Northwest Arkansas.

In the area of performance, Dr. Detels has studied with harpsichordists Margaret Gries and Larry Palmer and pianists Neil O’Doan, Alan and Alvin Chow, and Claudia Burson; and has performed frequently as a solo harpsichordist and keyboard accompanist in the state and region, including with the Butcher-Detels Duo (a 4-hand piano ensemble), the Boston Mountain Chamber Players, the Early Music Consort of Kansas City, the Duo Courante (with flutist Leonard Garrison), the Quartette Courante (with Garrison, Diane Bucchianeri, and violinist Maureen O’Boyle, the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, the University of Arkansas Schola Cantorum, and the Collegium Musicum (which she directs).  

Links to on-line articles by and about Claire Detels:
1. Detels, “Whither Feminist Aesthetics?” in ACT : Action, Theory and Criticism in Music Education 5/1 (January 2006).  Website: http: //www.siue.edu/MUSIC/ACTPAPERS/v5/Detels5_1.pdf

2. Detels, “Softening the Boundaries of Music in General Education,” ACT: Action, Theory and Criticism in Music Education 1/1 (April 2002). 
Website:  http://www.siue.edu/MUSIC/ACTPAPERS/ARCHIVE//Detels.pdf

3. Review of Detels, Soft Boundaries: Re-Visioning the Arts and Aesthetics in American Education (Bergin and Garvey, 1999), by Arnold Berleant in Aesthetics Online. Website:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5lt_TAfssIwJ:www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/berleant.html+&hl=en

4. Bowman, Wayne.  “Déjà vu all over again?  A Critical Respohnse to Claire Detels’s Helsinki Discussion Paper (#2, above) in ACT: Action, Theory and Criticism in Music Education 1/1 (April 2002).  Website: http: //www.siue.edu/MUSIC/ACTPAPERS/ARCHIVE/Bowman2Detels.pdf