As a scholar, Jacob Reed studies the intertwined nature of words and music in a variety of times, places, and repertoires. His dissertation, “Negotiating Grammars: Encounters Between Music and Text” combines tools from music theory and phonology to examine how lyrics and music fight, replace, and compensate for each other; case studies include recent American pop and hip-hop, Chinese Kunqu opera, and K-pop. Other recent and ongoing projects have explored the interaction of music, language, and aesthetics in Early and Middle Period Chinese literary thought; German Idealist anthropology and musical thought; jazz literature as criticism; and (with Chris Batterman Cháirez) music in the history of anthropology.

Jacob is a Teaching Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he was a Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellow and won the 2023 Cathy Heifetz Memorial Award. While at Yale, Jacob received a simultaneous BA/MA in music history and theory, while double-majoring in mathematics.