Stephen Foster at 200

On today's episode, Jason talks with Matthew D. Morrison about his extensive researches into the history of race and early American popular music. Matthew is an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. He is a musicologist and the award-winning author of Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States . A proud native of Charlotte, Nort...

On today's episode, Jennie talks with Deane Root, a name that's familiar to many scholars of music history. Deane is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was the Founding Director of the Center for American Music. Adding to his truly extensive list of publications on Stephen Foster, Deane has recently written a state-by-state breakdown on where to find primary sourc...

On today's episode, Jennie talks with Emily Bingham, author of My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song . "My Old Kentucky Home" is one of Foster's travel songs. His music traveled further from home than the songwriter ever did, and the song has reverberated, becoming an essential part of institutions like the Kentucky Derby. Emily is a...

On today's episode, Jason talks with Joanna Smolko about a Foster song entitled “Hard Times Come Again No More” that has enjoyed a unique afterlife. Joanna is an Instructor of Music at the University of Georgia and her areas of research include popular music, musical borrowing, American sacred music traditions like shape-note hymn singing, American folk music, and the intersections between Ame...

On today's episode, Jason talks with Cody Ebright-Jones about The Stephen Foster Story , a musical performed outdoors during the summer months in Bardstown, Kentucky. Cody is an independent scholar with a recent PhD in Musicology from the University of Michigan and studies the intersections of music, race, and history in the United States. As we discuss, The Stephen Foster Story is a complex,...

On today's episode, Jennie talks with Renee Lapp Norris, Professor of Music at Lebanon Valley College. Renee researches blackface minstrelsy and performance. She defines and challenges the form and its working-class roots in today's conversation. In this episode, we consider the split between performance and composition in the 19th century, and how the fact that Stephen Foster composed rat...

On today's episode, we’ll hear from Kazuko Miyashita about Stephen Foster’s music in Japan. Kazuko is a Professor Emerita and has published extensively on the influence of Foster’s music in her native country. Due to the time difference, Kazuko recorded a brief summary of her work and shared that with me for the podcast rather than attempting a live interview. Her contribution is highly valued...

On today's episode, Jason talks with Esther Morgan-Ellis about Foster’s memory in the state of Florida. Esther is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Georgia, but in her travels further south she discovered a unique history of pageantry and music-making at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida. Esther studies and writes about participato...

On today's episode, Jason talks with Jennie about her research into Stephen Foster's influence on American popular culture. Jennie is a lyric essayist and scholar of American literature. She has written two books, Blood at the Root: Lynching as American Cultural Nucleus and Captive City: Meditations on Slavery in the Urban South . She is also well known to Foster scholars for her 2008 essa...

In this episode, Jennie talks with Jason about his research into Stephen Foster and popular music copyright in early America. We also talk about how we got here and reflect on the behind-the-music narrative of Stephen Foster's rise and fall in conversation with pop culture history. Jason is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Clayton State University. To learn more abo...

In this episode, Jason talks with Samantha Ege about the connection between Stephen Foster and William Grant Still. Samantha is a pianist, musicologist, and a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Southhampton. She is a leading scholar of African American composer Florence B. Price, focusing on the Black Chicago Renaissance and Black women’s advocacy networks. She has a celebrat...

In this episode, Jason talks with Bill Brooks about the connection between Stephen Foster and Gussie Davis. Bill is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois and at the University of York. He is also Senior Research Fellow and Series Editor at the Orpheus Research Centre in Ghent, Belgium. Bill has published widely in American Musicology and has had a successful composition career. He dr...

In this episode, Jason talks with Candace Bailey about the musical lives of women in nineteenth-century America, and especially about what the binder’s volumes that women in Stephen Foster’s family used to collect sheet music can tell us about his life and legacy. Candace is a musicologist and John C. Neville Distinguished Professor at North Carolina Central University. Her research explores women...

In this episode, Jennie talks with Jim Davis, professor of musicology and chair of the music history area at SUNY Fredonia. Jim has written extensively about the music of the Civil War, expanding our conceptions of the fireside music of the front line, the fiddles and fifes of documentaries and films that represent the period. Jim and I have a wide-ranging conversation, not only about the music th...

In this episode, Jason talks with Chris Lynch, about an understudied early Foster composition entitled “Where Is Thy Spirit Mary?” Chris is Head of the Theodore M. Finney Music Library at the University of Pittsburgh and has done extensive work at the Center for American Music helping to preserve and catalog primary sources related to Stephen Foster. He is a music historian with expertise on topic...

In this episode, Jennie talks with Petra Meyer-Frazier, a musicologist who studies 19th century American music and culture. She teaches at the University of Denver and is the author of the book Bound Music, Unbound Women . Petra studies how women make and curate music, and so we talk about why Foster became the iconic American songwriter, the one 19th century songwriter that everyone remembers. We...

In this episode, Jennie talks with Kathryn Miller Haynes, Head of the Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh. The center is a successor institution of the Foster Hall Collection, the cornerstone of concrete memorial culture that sprung up around Stephen Foster in the early 20th century. Kathy is also a novelist and, as you'll hear, a great conversationalist. Remembering Step...

Welcome to Stephen Foster at 200 , a companion podcast to the edited volume Stephen Foster at 200: A Critical Reappraisal . In this first episode, hosts Jason Lee Guthrie and Jennie Lightness-Goff sit down with Robin James, the book's editor. Our conversation covered the project's background and why we were interested in writing about Stephen Foster in 2026. To learn more about the show and the bo...

On July 4th, 1826, America celebrated its jubilee Independence Day and mourned the loss of two founding fathers. It also welcomed the birth of a boy in Pittsburgh who would one day be known as the “Father of American Music.” Stephen Foster was the composer of many popular early American songs including “Camptown Races,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Swanee River,” and “Beautiful Dreamer”. “Oh! Susanna”...