Samantha Heinle

Biography

Samantha Heinle is a postdoctoral research associate working at the intersection of music and literature. Her research focuses on Austro-German works of the twentieth century and engages with media theory, aesthetics, and critical theory. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University with a dissertation on music as a medium of communication in three adaptations of texts by Franz Kafka: Ernst Krenek’s 1938 song cycle, Fünf Lieder nach Worten von Franz Kafka, Hans Werner Henze’s 1951 radio opera, Ein Landarzt, and Gottfried von Einem’s 1953 staged opera, Der Prozeß. She has published on the literary collaboration between Einem and Bertolt Brecht as discovered through original archival research, and current projects examine music, politics, and ethics, Theodor W. Adorno’s musical compositions, and film music.

After earning an A.B. in music and comparative literature from Harvard University, Heinle received a Fulbright Grant to conduct research at the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, Austria. Her scholarship has also been supported by the Michele Sicca Research Grant, the Manon Michels Einaudi Grant, and the Don M. Randel Teaching and Research Fellowship. Heinle has presented at the annual meetings of the German Studies Association and the Modern Language Association, internationally at the Institute of Austrian and German Music Research Conference and the Contemporary Hoffmann Symposium, and on Opera and Popular Culture After 1900. As an instructor, she has designed and led courses on music in film and Goethe’s Faust in music.