Michael G. Garber

Michael G. Garber is an interdisciplinary scholar of the performing arts, film, and media, and a specialist in Tin Pan Alley and the American musical on stage and screen. He leads community music programs with people aged three through ninety-three.

His second book, Songs She Wrote: Forty Hits by Pioneering Women of Popular Music, is coming out in March, 2025. It tells the stories of forty famous songs from the jazz decades, 1920-1960, and the forty-four women who wrote them. These female composers and lyricists were innovators of the Great American Songbook and Tin Pan Alley, creating enduring songs like “What a Difference a Day Made,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” and “God Bless’ the Child.”

Michael has a PhD is in Theatre, with a focus on dramatic literature and theatre history, and with a graduate certificate in Film Studies.

He teaches in fields as diverse as the arts, literature, education, humanities, anthropology, English as a Second Language, and communications.

In recent years, Michael has been a Visiting Instructor Person of Interest (i.e., visiting researcher) at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a Visiting Researcher at both the University of Winchester and the University of London, Goldsmiths College.

He is the winner of the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching (2019).

He publishes and lectures internationally.