Directory
Samuel Dorf
Professor of Musicology; Acting Executive Director, University Honors Program; Early Music Ensemble
Joint Appointment, Full-Time Faculty
College of Arts and Sciences: Music; Academic Affairs and Learning Initiatives: University Honors Program
Degrees
- Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2009
- M.A. Tufts University, 2004
- B.A. and B.Mus., Boston University, 2002
Profile
Samuel N. Dorf is a musicologist and dance historian. He has published articles and books dealing with the performance and reinvention of ancient Greek music and dance in fin-de-siècle Paris, and queer music reception and has presented papers at history, queer studies, dance history, classics archaeology and musicology conferences throughout North America and Europe. His research areas include intersections between musicology and dance studies and the history of technology, reception studies, queer studies, film studies and the history of performance practice. He has won awards, grants and fellowships from Northwestern University, Harvard University, the Society of Dance History Scholars, the American Musicological Society and the Association for Theater in Higher Education. His book Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance in Paris, 1890-1930 was published by Oxford University Press in 2019.
Selected publications
Anthology to Accompany Gateways to Understanding Music. Edited by Samuel N. Dorf, Heather MacLachlan and Julia Randel. New York: Routledge, 2021.
“Ancient Mesopotamian Music, the Politics of Reconstruction, and Extreme Early Music,” Open Access Musicology 1 (2020): 31-59. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12063224
“How to Talk about Opera at a Time of Crisis,” Naxos Musicology International, Naxos Music Library, 4 April 2020, https://www.naxosmusicology.com/opinion/public-musicology-how-to-talk-about-opera-at-a-time-of-crisis/.
Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi, 1890-1930. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
“Eva Palmer-Sikelianos Dances Aeschylus: The Politics of Historical Reenactment When Staging the Rites of the Past.” Choros: International Dance Journal 5 (Spring 2016): 1-11.
“The Classroom and Public Musicology,” Musicology Now, Official Blog of the American Musicological Society, 16 December 2015, http://musicologynow.ams-net.org/2015/12/bringing-public-musicology-in-classroom.html.
“Eroticizing Antiquity: Madame Mariquita, Régina Badet and the Dance of the Exotic Greeks from Stage to Popular Press.” In Opera, Exoticism and Visual Culture. Edited by Hyunseon Lee and Naomi Segal. Bern, Oxford, and New York: Peter Lang, 2015.
“Staging Antiquity.” guest introduced and edited, Opera Quarterly 29, no. 2 (Spring 2013).
"Dancing Greek Antiquity in Public and Private: Isadora Duncan's Early Patronage in Paris." Dance Research Journal 44, no. 1 (2012): 2-27.
Book review of Nijinsky's Bloomsbury Ballet: Reconstruction of the Dance & Design for Jeux, by Millicent Hodson (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2010) and Stravinsky's Pulcinella: A Facsimile of the Sources and Sketches, by Maureen A. Carr (Middletown, WI: A-R Editions, 2008), in The Journal of the American Musicological Society 65, no. 1 (Spring, 2012): 276-288.
"Seeing Sappho in Paris: Operatic and Choreographic Adaptations of Sapphic Lives and Myths." Music and Art: International Journal for Music Iconography 38 (2009): 289-308.
"Étrange n'est-ce pas? The Princesse Edmond de Polignac, Erik Satie's Socrate, and a Lesbian Aesthetic of Music?" French Literature Series 34 (2007): 87-99.