Programs in Anthropology are proud to announce that Caprice Corona, Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Anthropology, has been awarded the Provost's Grant for Conference Presentation & Professional Development. This competitive award supports Teachers College students in presenting their research at professional conferences. Caprice has earned the grant for her research presentation "Parenting, Performance, and Precarity: Consequences of Caregiving Labor for Opera Singer-Parents."

Opera in the United States enjoys high sociocultural value despite the economic fragility of its philanthropically funded, physically demanding, contract-based work for singers. So when professional opera singers choose to have children, they confront an unpredictable parenting and childcare landscape – a “precarious livelihood” (Tsing 2015) – without the proximity of extended family or the security of financial stability. Unequal employment opportunities favor male singers (Carskadden and Brown 2024), while industry standards fetishize youth and Western ideals; taken together, these conditions normalize gendered and racialized differences that complicate the intersection of parenting and an opera performance-based career (Varga et al., n.d.). 

Drawing from ongoing ethnographic research with opera singers in the United States, Caprice's paper presents preliminary findings on the consequences of caregiving labor for professional opera singer-parents. She identifies an affective longing for the embodied practice of opera singing that results when caregiving responsibilities and uncertainties preclude a vocation as an opera singer. This work is exploratory in nature and offers opportunities to consider future research possibilities among American opera singer-parents who navigate their dual roles as performer and parent, in the face of the precarity inherent in both.   

Caprice will showcase her research at the Provost's Grant Research Expo on April 28th, 2026 in the Smith Learning Theater. This event celebrates student research achievements and the TC research community.

Congratulations to Caprice on this wonderful achievement!