Sarah Louden
Clinical Assistant Professor of Music and Director for the Music Theory and History Program
Music and Performing Arts Professions
Sarah Louden is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Music and the Director for the Music Theory and History Program. She holds a Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Buffalo SUNY, a Masters in Music Theory from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a Bachelors in Music Performance from Concordia College Moorhead.
Her research examines the cognitive effects of multisensory perception on a broad range of musical topics including multimedia and contemporary music analysis, music theory pedagogy, classroom accessibility, stage performance, digital technology and virtual reality. Dr. Louden’s dissertation, entitled “Cross-Sensory Perception in Music and Visual Media: A Neuro-Cognitive Approach to Cross-Domain Mapping in Multimedia,” received the distinguished dissertation award from the University of Buffalo in 2018.
Her most recent work explores curricular redesign and inclusive music theory pedagogy. Dr. Louden is currently leading a curricular redesign of core undergraduate music theory and history coursework at NYU Steinhardt. (More information about the project is available here.) She has served as an invited panelist to discuss curricular change in music theory at the Society for Music Theory (November 2023), Music and the Moving Image (May 2023), and the American Musicological Society Annual Talkback (May 2023). The curriculum project is supported by the NYU Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions and grants from the Center for Faculty Advancement and the Center for Humanities.
Selected Publications
See a list of presentations and publications in an updated CV here.