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Joanna Smolko earned a Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Pittsburgh (2009), where she studied with Deane Root and worked in the Center for American Music. She currently teaches various music courses at the Â鶹´«Ã½, University of Georgia, and the University System of Georgia, as well as working as a private music teacher and academic editor/coach.

Her areas of research include popular music, musical borrowing, American sacred music (especially shape-note hymn traditions), American folk music, and the intersections between American history and music.

Publications

She was a contributing editor for the 2nd edition of The Grove Dictionary of American Music (Oxford University Press, 2013). Her publications include Stephen Collins Foster: 60 Favorite Songs (Mel Bay, 2010), coedited with Stephen Saunders, and “Southern-Fried Foster: Representing Race and Place in Looney Tunes Cartoons” American Music 30:3 (2012). She coedited Christian Sacred Music Traditions in the Americas (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021), writing a chapter for the volume entitled “Hymns of Joyful Praise: Sacred Harp Singing in Athens, Georgia.” With Tim Smolko, she coauthored Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music (Indiana University Press, 2021), which was awarded the 2016 Hampsong Education Fellowship in American Song by the Society for American Music.