Susan Schmidt Horning

Susan Schmidt Horning came to St. John’s University in 2007 after teaching at The Cleveland Institute of Art and at Case Western Reserve University. She specializes in 20th c. United States cultural history, history of technology, and sound studies, and she teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in postwar U.S., technology and science, the 1960s, media and technology, urban history, and global history since 1500.

Prof. Schmidt Horning’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, and her essays have appeared in Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century (2002), The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon (2004), and in the journals ICON and Social Studies of Science. Her first book, Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), explores the interplay of technology, music, sound engineering, and creativity from the birth of the music recording industry to the 1970s. Her interest in music and technology is the natural extension of her previous life as a rock guitarist and singer who began playing at age fourteen in an all-girl rock band. She is currently working on a history of girl bands during the 1960s and 1970s, a study of how women engaged with technology and navigated the male-dominated world of rock music in the postwar era.