Mark Samples

Degrees:
Ph.D. 2011, Musicology, University of Oregon
BA. Music 2003, Music Theory and Composition, Point Loma Nazarene University

Honors:
College of Arts and Humanities Outstanding Research Award, CWU
Faculty Research Award, Office of Graduate Studies and Research, CWU
Coleman Foundation Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship
Igniting the Flame Award for Creative Teaching, The Experiential Classroom
Finalist, Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award, Society for American Music
Excellence in Teaching Award, School of Music, University of Oregon
University Outstanding Scholar in Music, University of Oregon

Mark Samples is a musicologist with interests in popular music, music industry studies, American music in the 20th and 21st Centuries, and arts entrepreneurship. Prior to his appointment at CWU, he held appointments at Millikin University and Millsaps College. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Western music history, ethnomusicology, jazz, film music, popular music, and arts entrepreneurship, among other topics.

Samples's current book project, Sway: How Promotion has Shaped American Music, explores the influence of branding, marketing, and advertising on the production of music since 1850, and covers wide-ranging case studies from Jenny Lind to Joan Baez, Duke Ellington, and Arcade Fire. His research has appeared in Musical Quarterly, the Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd Ed., and The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre and Popular Music (OUP, 2018, winner of the Ruth A. Solie Prize for collected musicological essays). He has given research presentations at regional and national meetings of the American Musicological Society, and at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, Yale University, Boston University, and the International Musicological Colloquium in Brno, Czech Republic, among others. He was also a supplemental author for The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition, by Richard Taruskin and Christopher Gibbs.

Selected Publications
2018. Samples, Mark C. “Timbre and Legal Likeness: The Case of Tom Waits” in The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre and Popular Music, eds. Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, 119–140.
2018. Samples, Mark C., and Sara Theis. “The Entrepreneurial Life: Creating Value in the Theatrical and Performance Industry.” In Arts Entrepreneurship, eds. J. Mark Munoz and Julienne Shields.
2017. Samples, Mark C. “The Humbug and the Nightingale: P. T. Barnum, Jenny Lind, and the Branding of a Star Singer for American Reception.” Musical Quarterly 99, 3–4: 286–320.
2013. Samples, Mark C. “Distinguishing Aida Inside and Outside Egypt.” In The Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Seria: Metamorphosis of the Opera in the Imperial Age. Ed. Petr Macek and Jana Perutková. Prague: KLP, 2013, 259–263.