Johanna L. Spector Papers and Audio-Visual Materials 1936-2007 [Bulk: 1947-1995]

The collection primarily includes post-WWII materials documenting Johanna Spector’s career as an ethnomusicologist, documentary film maker, and professor studying the native cantillation and lives of Middle Eastern and Asian Jewish communities and her professional publishing, lectures, travel, and teaching responsibilities at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Correspondence, journal entries, school records and class notes, and photographs document her personal life as well as her life prior to the war. The collection includes: artifacts, artwork, audio recordings, awards, book and article manuscripts, book reviews, books, calendars, certificates, clippings, concert programs, correspondence, date books, flyers, film footage, grant applications, interview transcripts, journals, Ketubot, musical scores and transcriptions, newsletters, oral history transcripts, photographs, negatives and slides, poetry, publicity, research notes, and teaching materials (note books, lecture notes, student papers, and sample exam questions). Reel-to-reel audio tape recorders, a record turntable, receiver and speakers, film editing equipment, several still and moving image cameras and their related equipment, and a monochord also came with the collection. Materials are available by appointment only. To make an appointment and request materials in advance, contact the Librarian in charge of archival materials at: 212.678.8077 or via E-mail: srr@jtsa.edu Please cite as: The Johanna L. Spector Papers and Audio-Visual Materials, The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, N.Y., ARC.2008.03 (Box #, folder #). The Johanna Spector Papers and Audio-Visual Materials processing project was made possible by a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives Grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through a program administered by the Council on Library Resources (CLIR). Gift of the Spector estate, 2008. Johanna Lichtenberg Spector was born and raised in Latvia. She studied music history, theory, and piano, and taught in Vienna (Austria) and later in Riga (Latvia) until WWII. Surviving forced labor camps Spector immigrated to the U.S. in 1947 and completed a Ph.D. in Jewish studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (Ohio) in 1950 to work as an ethnomusicologist. She built her career on studying the native cantillation and prayers of Yemenite, Persian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Indian Jewish Communities, as well as the Samaritan people. In 1954 she joined the faculty of the Cantor’s Institute and College of Music at JTS, establishing the Department of Ethnomusicology in 1962 and serving as its director until retirement in 1985. In the late 1960s she began making documentary films to further disseminate information about the lives and customs of the communities she studied. Hebrew (printed and handwritten), German, French, Samaritan (in Samaritan and Hebrew scripts), Yiddish, Russian, and Latvian.