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 essay “Long Time I Trabble on de Way”: Stephen Foster's Conversion Narrative" published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies. I got to talk with Jennie about Foster's connection to pop music icons like Al Jolson and Elvis Presley, and her own unique insight into Foster's struggle with alcohol addiction.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.
https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Blood-at-the-Root
https://www.pennpress.org/9781512826685/captive-city/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-1598.2008.00152.x