Hannah Lewis

Hannah Lewis is an Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of Graduate Studies at the Butler School of Music, University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in music for film and visual media, American popular music traditions, musical theater, early twentieth-century French music, and American avant-garde and experimental music.

Her educational background includes a Ph.D. from Harvard University (2014) and a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University. She has been teaching at the Butler School since completing her doctorate, developing expertise across multiple musical traditions and media forms.

Lewis's research focuses on cultural and aesthetic aspects of the contemporary film musical, musical theater and contemporary politics. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of the Society for American Music, American Music, and other prominent journals. She presents regularly at national and international conferences including the American Musicological Society, Society for American Music, and Music and the Moving Image. Her publications reveal consistent patterns examining how music functions within broader social and political contexts, particularly in film and theater, with attention to representation, identity, and cultural meaning.

Scientific Awards and Grants:

• Collaborative research grant through UT's Office of the Vice President of Research (2019) titled 'The Cultural Impact of The Eyes of Texas: Antiracist Activism, Participatory Singing, and Fan Identity'

Lewis teaches diverse courses including Music and Culture, Music and Film Sound, U.S. Music, The American Musical, Historiographies of U.S. Music, The Film Musical, Opera and Cinema, and Classic Musicals Then and Now. As Director of Graduate Studies, she oversees the graduate program in Musicology & Ethnomusicology at the Butler School of Music, which is committed to integrating musicology and ethnomusicology, history and ethnography, and encouraging students to challenge boundaries between Western 'art' repertories, non-Western traditions, and popular music.