Sasha is a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology from Columbia, South Carolina. Her research interests revolve around expressions of Blackness, specifically in classical music during the early 20th century, historiography, staged works of Black culture (e.g. opera and ballet), Black experimentalism, R&B, cultural anthropology, religion, public history, museum curation, and archivism. Her dissertation research is focused on the life of the understudied Harlem Renaissance opera composer H. Lawrence Freeman (1869-1945) in relation to the development of the Black Intelligentsia and Black historiography in the early 20th century and how opera, a genre known for its racially exclusionary nature, is used as a site of memory for preserving the Black cultural experience. Sasha hopes in the future, alongside her career in academia, to extend her research into the public history sector through museum curation and archival practices. Outside of musicology, she finds joy in traveling, anime, and deems herself an ice cream expert.
