Musicologist Michael Budds teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music history, music appreciation, and music bibliography. A native of Illinois, he holds degrees from Knox College and the University of Iowa.

As a scholar, Dr. Budds has devoted his energies to the subjects of American music, the history of African-American music, and music in Victorian England. He is the author of the monograph Jazz in the Sixties (2nd ed., 1990) and the co-author of the sourcebook Rock Recall: Readings in American Popular Music from the Emergence of Rock and Roll to the Demise of the Woodstock Nation (1993). He is a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of American Music; The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz; Women & Music: A History; Bleep! Censoring Rock and Rap; and American National Biography. He serves the College Music Society as editor of its publication series Monographs and Bibliographies in American Music. In 2000, he was named a William T. Kemper Fellow for Excellence in Teaching.