Jessica Schwartz approaches musical representations and sonic histories of militarization and imperial violence, affective alliances, and creative dissent through historical, ethnographic, and theoretical methods. Her work dialogs with American studies, Pacific studies, environmental anthropology, and indigenous studies, and she has begun to collaborate on projects relating to musical activism, artistic expression, and climate change in the Pacific. Other research interests include issues of musical transcription and analysis, critical pedagogies, race, class, and gender in respect to popular music from the postwar onwards and subcultural genres, such as punk and hip-hop. In 2013, Prof. Schwartz co-founded and continues to serve as Cultural Programs Advisor to the Marshallese Educational Initiative, Inc., a not-for-profit organization based in Arkansas that raises cultural awareness of and promotes educational opportunities for the Marshallese population. An active guitarist, she composes and performs experimental noise-based and punk music.