She often explores sites of musical intersection and hybridity, whether having to do with race, genre, cultural hierarchy, or geographic origin, and she probes institutional frameworks for music-making, as well as patronage (especially by women).
The composers she has written about include Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, George Gershwin, Colin McPhee, Ruth Crawford Seeger, William Grant Still, and Virgil Thomson.
[4][5] Together with her husband and Lucius Wyatt (Prairie View A&M University) she established the Cultural Diversity Committee of the American Musicological Society.
After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Oja was one of several signatories to say that she wished to retract her signature.
She also received the Everett S. Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.