In celebration of Open Education Week 2026, the Senate of College Councils and UT Libraries partnered to ask students to nominate instructors who have positively impacted their educational experience through their use of free or low-cost materials. We’ll be recognizing a few of our nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions! More information about this program can be found on our LibGuides page, as well as in our overview post about our 2026 Champions.
Today, we congratulate and thank Dr. Hannah Lewis, who was nominated by UGS 303 students in the Butler School of Music.
Dr. Hannah Lewis, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Texas at Austin, is a musicologist who specializes in music for film and visual media, American popular music traditions, and musical theater. She is the author of French Musical Culture and the Coming of Sound Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2019), La La Land (Oxford University Press, 2024), and co-editor (with Jim Buhler) of Voicing the Cinema: Film Music and the Integrated Soundtrack (University of Illinois Press, 2020). Her current research explores cultural and aesthetic aspects of the contemporary film musical, as well as musical theater and contemporary politics. She is co-editor (with Dominic Broomfield-McHugh) of the forthcoming Palgrave Companion to Nostalgia and the Hollywood Musical. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2014 and has been teaching at UT since then.
We asked Dr. Lewis what led her to select free and low-cost materials for her courses. She told us:
For me, choosing affordable course materials has been both about reducing cost for students and enabling a more flexible structure to my course content. I have always been surprised at how expensive textbooks can be. I also find teaching to textbooks limiting, as it restricts the kinds of perspectives that students are exposed to. Instead, I find it easier and more affordable to ask students to read articles or book chapters that are available for free through the UT Library. Additionally, I frequently teach courses on film music and musical theater, and viewing films is a critical part of the course experience. I have worked very closely over the years with Uri Kolodney, the Film and Video Liaison Librarian, and with his wonderful assistance, I have been able to only assign films that students can access via streaming through the UT Library.
When asked if she noticed a change in student response when shifting from more expensive course materials to free and low-cost materials, Dr. Lewis responded:
I have always aimed for affordable course materials. But it’s worth mentioning one change that I have been able to make to my Signature Course, American Musicals and American Culture, in recent years. I always require students to attend one live production during the semester. Usually, I have been able to subsidize the cost of tickets thanks to funds from the Signature Course Office, which helps keep the cost more affordable. But for the past two years, thanks to the support of Texas Performing Arts in securing a group ticket rate and further subsidizing the cost of tickets, I have been able to take my entire class to see a touring Broadway production at Bass Concert Hall at no cost to my students. This has been a profound change–students are able to see top quality live theater without any concern of the cost.
Finally, Dr. Lewis provided the following advice to any instructors considering changing their courses to free and low-cost materials:
It may be more work to develop your own course materials through library resources the first time you teach a class, but it is absolutely worth it for the flexibility it offers you as an instructor, and for the burden that it alleviates for the students!
