Dr. Samantha M. Cooper
- Robert M. Beren Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
- American Jewish history and culture | Jewish music and sound studies | cultural history | Jews and opera | Jews and popular music | Jewish humor | archival history | critical theory
Contact Info
Biography —
Dr. Samantha M. Cooper is the Robert M. Beren Assistant Professor in Jewish Studies at the University of Kansas. Her research examines the many intersections of music and sound with American Jewish life between the late nineteenth century and the present day. Her first book, American Jews and the Making of the New York Opera Industry, 1880-1940, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press with the support of the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award and the Vice Chancellor for Research and Friends of the Hall Center Award from the University of Kansas. Her articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Opera Quarterly, American Jewish History, and the Journal of the Society for American Music. Samantha’s doctoral dissertation received both the Society for American Music’s Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award, and the Salo Wittmayer Baron Dissertation Award in Jewish Studies. She has previously held postdoctoral fellowships in Jewish Studies at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and received her PhD in Historical Musicology from New York University. Cooper is the host and producer of The Sounding Jewish Podcast, and the Co-Executive Director of the Jewish Music Forum, A Project of the American Society for Jewish Music.
Education —
Research —
- American Jewish history and culture
- Jewish music and sound studies
- Cultural history
- Jews and opera
- Jews and popular music
- Jewish humor
- Archival history
- Critical theory
Teaching —
Dr. Cooper currently teaches the following courses:
- JWSH 176: The American Jewish Story through Languages, Literatures, and Latkes
- JWSH 300: Topics in Jewish Studies: Music in Jewish History
- JWSH 300: Topics in Jewish Studies: Kansas and the Midwestern Jewish Experience
- JWSH 336 / ENG 336: Jewish American Literature and Culture
Selected Publications —
Cooper, Samantha M. American Jews and the Making of the New York Opera Industry, 1880-1940. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Cooper, Samantha M. “Synagogue Cantors and the Metropolitan Opera,” Yuval XV (2026): forthcoming.
Cooper, Samantha M. “Falling Off the Roof and Into the Opera House: Opera-Going, Jewish Immigrants, and Cultural Anxiety in American Popular Culture,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 79, no. 2 (2026): forthcoming.
Cooper, Samantha M. “To see what lovely Japanese our young people can be: American Jewish Community Performance, Racial Appropriation, and Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado, 1885-1939,” The Opera Quarterly (March 2024): 1-29.
Cooper, Samantha M. “Emma Goldman, An Anarchist at the Opera,” American Jewish History 106, no. 2 (April 2022): 113-142.
Cooper, Samantha M. “‘I’d Rather [Sound] Blue’: Listening to Agency, Hybridity, and Intersectionality in the Vocal Recordings of Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand,” Journal of the Society for American Music 16, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 1-23.
Levy, Daniela and Samantha M. Cooper, “The Contemporary Study of Jewish Engagement with Opera in America,” “Contemporary Jewish Music in America from 2000 to 2020” colloquy, eds. Mark Kligman and Judah Cohen, Journal of Synagogue Music 46, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 34-39.
Awards & Honors —
General Research Fund Award, University of Kansas, 2026
Vice Chancellor for Research & Friends of the Hall Center Book Publication Award, University of Kansas, 2025
Salo Wittmayer Baron Dissertation Award, Arizona State University, 2025
New York Public Library Short Term Research Fellowship, New York Public Library Performing Arts Division, 2025
Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award, Society for American Music, 2024
Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award, Association for Jewish Studies, 2024
Jewish Studies and Music Study Group Award for Best Article, American Musicological Society, 2023
H. Robert Cohen/RIPM Endowment, American Musicological Society, 2023-2024
Research Fellowship, Feinstein Center for Research in American Jewish Experience, Temple University, Summer 2021
Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Graduate Fellowship, Center for Jewish History, 2020-2021
Doctoral Scholarship, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, 2020-2021
Doctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2020-2021
Betty Cook Karrh Memorial Scholar, P.E.O. Scholar Award, International Chapter of the P.E.O. [Philanthropic Educational Organization], 2020-2021
Graduate Research Fellowship, American Academy for Jewish Research, Summer 2020
Predoctoral Summer Graduate Fellowship, New York University, Summer 2020
Provost’s Graduate Research Initiative, Tel Aviv Campus, New York University, Spring 2020
MacCracken Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, New York University, 2016-2022