Sarah Marlowe is Assistant Professor of Music Theory. Her research interests include counterpoint, fugue, Schenkerian analysis, Russian music theory, the music of J. S. Bach and Dmitri Shostakovich, and music theory and aural skills pedagogy. Her current projects focus on the analysis and promotion of music by women composers. She holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (B.Mus., piano performance; M.M., music theory and accompanying) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D., music theory).

Marlowe has presented her research at regional, national, and international conferences. In 2013, she received the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award for her work developing Schenkerian voice-leading paradigms in fugue expositions. This work was later published in Theory and Practice. Her research also appears in Music Theory Online, the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, The Norton Guide to Teaching Music Theory, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, and the Oxford Handbook of Musical Variation.

Marlowe is a recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the University of Rochester’s G. Graydon (’58) and Jane W. Curtis Award for Nontenured Faculty Teaching (2025), the NYU Steinhardt Teaching Excellence Award (2018), the University of Rochester’s Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence and Teaching by a Graduate Student (2010), and the Eastman School of Music’s Teaching Assistant Prize (2008). Beyond her success in the classroom, she is also dedicated to training new music theory instructors. She leads the graduate seminar in music theory pedagogy at Eastman, and served as a clinician for the inaugural Graduate Student Pedagogy Workshop sponsored by the Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Center for Theory Pedagogy in May 2025.

She has served as a board member (2013–2017) and Secretary (2021–2025) for the Music Theory Society of New York State, was co-editor of Theory and Practice (2016–2019), and recently completed her term as editor of the SMT Newsletter. Prior to joining the Eastman faculty, Marlowe was Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Music Theory at New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.