Center for the Study of the Middle East

Dr. Amy Horowitz has three decades of experience in the academy, the music industry, and grassroots arts networks. Her main research interests are Mediterranean Israeli Music, (a form of contemporary popular Israeli music created by Israeli Jews from Islamic countries), the study of cultures in disputed territories, the folklore traditions of contemporary Jerusalem, and protest music as responsible citizenship. Her work in cross-cultural and multiracial coalitions (Artist Representative for Sweet Honey in the Rock 1977 - 1994) complements her academic background that combines training in Jewish studies and Ethnomusicology (MA, New York University, 1986) with Folklore and Israel studies (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1994).

Dr. Horowitz served as assistant and acting director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, where she was awarded a Grammy as co-producer of the The Anthology of American Folk Music. Also, while at the Smithsonian she served as curator for The Jerusalem Project under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Research for that project, originally intended as the groundwork for a 1993 Smithsonian Folklife Festival program, became the basis for folklore archives, which are now housed at Hebrew University and Bir Zeit University. Horowitz also selected elements for inclusion in a video documentary on Israeli and Palestinian cultures in Jerusalem, for which she was Executive Producer and Research Director (Jerusalem: Gates to the City, 1996). Horowitz subsequently received generous funding to continue this project through the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Melton Center for Jewish Studies, Outreach and Engagement, the Batelle Foundation, and the Office of International Affairs.

Dr. Horowitz's recent book: "Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic" received Honorable Mention in the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award of the Association of Jewish Studies in 2010. She has published articles on popular music and politics in Israel in "The Journal of American Folklore", as well as edited two anthologies; one by Ted Swedenborg and Rebecca Stein and the other by Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett and Jonathan Karp.

Dr. Horowitz teaches courses on music, globalization, and disputed territories through the International Studies Program. She is a research associate and scholar of folklore and music at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and a faculty board member at the Middle East Studies Center, Ohio State University.