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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 University of North Georgia, 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.