Samantha Silver

Dr. Samantha Silver, PhD (she/her) recently defended her dissertation in the department of American Studies at the George Washington University. She also holds a BA in American Studies from UC Berkeley. Her work focuses on comedy in film, media, and sound in U.S. popular culture. Her dissertation, “A Blues Singer and a Drag Queen Walk into a Bar: A History of Stand-up Comedy” examines the connections between the blues, drag performance, and stand-up comedy, arguing that Black women and queer performers were some of the first stand-up comedians and were early innovators of the stand-up comedy album. Also a committed public historian, she contributed to NPR Music’s “Turning the Tables: 8 Women Who Invented American Popular Music” and developed a course on entertainment history in coordination with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She is an award-winning teacher who is passionate about demystifying academic writing for first-year students.