Music, Sound, Cultural History
I am a writer and scholar specializing in cultural history, with particular interest in the history of music, sound studies, war and society, and the history of capitalism. My scholarly interests also include media studies, the history of the senses, the history of emotions, the history of film and photography, and intellectual property.
UPCOMING, CURRENT, RECENT
Publication of Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers (University of Chicago Press) — coming this fall!
Mar 2024, “‘Music and Guns Go Hand in Hand’: World War I and the Sonic History of American Warfare” — Society for Military History, Arlington, VA
Mar 2024, “’A Singing Soldier Is a Fighting Soldier’: Communal Music-Making in the U.S. Military in World War I” — International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US, Philadelphia PA
Feb 21, 2024 — Keynote address, “Understanding the Rise of Music as Big Business: Three Revolutions,” at the Business of Music Symposium, Mississippi State University — here
Just published: a special issue on “New Approaches to Music and Sound in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, co-edited with Rebecca McKenna — here
Nov 2023, “Music as an Instrument of War: Song, Race, and U.S. Empire in the Philippines, 1898-1903” — American Studies Association conference, Montreal, Canada
Sep. 15, 2023, “Capitalism and the Senses: Some Reflections” — Connected Histories of Capitalism series, European University Institute
Jun 2023, “The Resonance of Violence: The Musical Afterlife of the U.S. War in Iraq” — International Association for the Study of Popular Music conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Spring 2023: Publication of Capitalism and the Senses, a book I co-edited and to which I contributed a chapter, “Sky’s the Limit: Capitalism, the Senses, and the Failure of Commercial Supersonic Aviation in the United States” (part of my ongoing work on the history of sonic booms)
MY BOOKS
Capitalism and the Senses, a book I co-edited, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2023.
Part of the Hagley Perspectives on Business and Culture Series.
Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard University Press)
A Choice “Outstanding Academic Titles of 2009
Winner of the Hagley Prize for the best book in business history for 2009.
Winner of the 2011 DeSantis Prize of the Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.
Honorable mention, 2010 Woody Guthrie Prize, International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), U.S. branch.
Certificate of Merit, 2010 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, Best Research in General History of Recorded Sound Category, Association for Recorded Sound Collections
Reviews: The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Nation, Wilson Quarterly, Washington Times, Forbes.com, Los Angeles Times blog, and others.
There’s also a Chinese edition.
Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), co-edited by David Suisman and Susan Strasser, with an introduction by David.
“This collection…is multicultural historical analysis at its best.” — Journal of American History
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ONLINE SUPPLEMENT TO SELLING SOUNDS:
