Samantha Bassler (she/her) has taught music theory and music history at NYU Steinhardt since 2016. Educated at Nyack College, Merton College, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the Open University, Samantha first trained professionally as a church musician, and then as a musicologist, music theorist, and private music instructor.
She lives in Brooklyn, NYC, and owns Stellar Music Space in Fort Greene, a private music school, where she also teaches piano, voice, and strings, and is also organist and music director at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church of Flatbush.
As a scholar, her research interests focus on music and early modern England, especially the intersections of music, disability, and gender, and the reception history of early English music during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Samantha’s scholarly articles appear in journals and collections such as Music Theory Online, postmedieval, The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, and Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. With Katherine Butler, Samantha co-edited the book, Music, Myth, and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, published in March 2019 by Boydell & Brewer Press, wherein her latest article was published. Samantha is also a certified yoga teacher and a disability rights advocate.