Rebecca

Cypess

The Mordecai D. Katz and Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean, Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Email:

rebecca.cypess@yu.edu

Office Phone:

646-592-4801

Office Address:

Yeshiva College:
Belfer Hall Room 516
2495 Amsterdam Ave.
New York, NY 10033

Stern College:
215 Lexington Ave.
Room 609
New York, NY 10016

Education:

BA, Cornell University; MMus, Royal College of Music (London); MA, Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University; MA, MPhil, and PhD, Yale University

Biography:

Rebecca Cypess is the Mordecai D. Katz and Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean of the Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yeshiva University. Committed to the model of servant-leadership, she strives to promote and highlight excellence in teaching, research, and service among the faculty, students, and staff of Stern College for Women and Yeshiva College. Cypess is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary thinking and scholarly collaboration, especially by helping to bring the expansive study of Torah into dialogue with deep, open-ended inquiry in the sciences, social and behavioral sciences, arts, and humanities.

Prior to her work at Yeshiva University, Cypess served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Notable accomplishments from her administrative tenure there include the creation of an Arts in Health Research Lab in collaboration with the Rutgers School of Public Health and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, as well as the establishment of interdisciplinary curricular programs in collaboration with the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and the Rutgers Business School. She also served for eight years as founding co-chair of Rutgers JFAS (Jewish Faculty, Administrators, and Staff), a grassroots group of Jewish employees that combats antisemitism as well as anti-Israel bias and promotes a positive, supportive environment for Jews on campus.

Starting in 2023, the disturbing rise in antisemitism in higher education led Cypess to begin publishing and speaking widely on the purposes of academia and how it can be reclaimed as a site of reason and understanding. Her work on these issues has appeared in Tablet, Inside Higher Ed, and other nationally recognized venues.

Publications:

A noted music historian and historical keyboardist, Rebecca Cypess specializes in the cultural history and performance practices of music in 17th- and 18th-century Europe and America, as well as music in Jewish culture, music in the history of science, and women in music. She the author of Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2022); Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo's Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2016); and over 45 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She is co-editor of five books, including Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy: New Perspectives (Indiana University Press, 2022) and Sara Levy's World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin (University of Rochester Press, 2018). She has been the recipient of two awards from the American Musicological Society: the Noah Greenberg Award for contributions to historical performance and the Ruth A. Solie Award for a collection of musicological essays of exceptional merit.

A harpsichordist and historical pianist, Cypess is the founder and director of the Raritan Players, a period-instrument chamber group devoted to the exploration of little-known compositions and performance practices of the eighteenth century. The group's recordings have been called "simply mesmerizing" (Early Music America), "enchanting" (Classics Today), and "an unexpected treasure" (American Record Guide). In addition, Cypess has recorded music to accompany exhibitions of eighteenth-century artwork at the Royal Academy of Arts (London) and for the Apple TV series Franklin.