Sarah Suhadolnik is a scholar and teacher of American music, with special interests in jazz and popular music. Much of her research centers around overlapping ideas of music and place—particularly those that highlight the ways in which public perceptions of dynamic musical landmarks, such as New Orleans, are shaped by their popular musical representation. Through this work, Suhadolnik has explored issues relating to music and the performance of place-based identities, the generative nature of geographical thought in music, and the place-based production of local, regional, and national cultural heritage. Interested in all manner of “musical place,” she has also investigated the legal, technical, and social apparatuses that support “music sharing” activities in digital music environments. 

Suhadolnik has presented papers at national and international conferences, including the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, the American Studies Association, and the International Musicological Society. Her publications include articles in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2^nd Edition, and a study of the contemporary singer-songwriter Adele featured in the 2016 Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter. She has also served as a member of the editorial staff for both the Music of the United States of America series and the University of Michigan Gershwin Initiative, and acted as the managing editorial assistant for the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education (2015-2017). Suhadolnik’s teaching has been recognized by the University of Michigan (Glenn McGeoch Memorial Scholarship in Musicology), and includes extensive experience as a teaching consultant.

Suhadolnik received her PhD from the University of Michigan, where her dissertation, Navigating Jazz: Music, Place, and New Orleans, was supported in part by the Lillian A. Ives Graduate Student Fellowship at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, and is currently under contract with University of Michigan Press. Before joining the faculty at the University of Iowa in 2017, she taught at Michigan and Western Michigan University.

Courses taught

• History of Music I
• History of Music II
• Concepts and Contexts in Western Music
• Advanced Jazz History
• World of The Beatles
• American Music

Graduate seminars

• American Music: The Sounds and Histories of New Orleans Jazz
• Sounds of Disaster
• Contemporary Popular Music