Prof. Gavin James Campbell

E-mail: gcampbel@mail.doshisha.ac.jp

Education

Ph.D., 1999, History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

M.A., 1994, History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

B.A., 1992, History, Cornell University

Selected Publications

"Buried Alive in the Blues": Janis Joplin and the Souls of White Folk, in How Far is America From Here: Selected Proceedings of the First World Congress of the International American Studies Association 22-24 May 2003, edited by Theo D'haen, Paul Giles, Djelal Kadir, and Lois Parkinson Zamora (Amsterdam/NY: Rodopi, 2005), 499-507.

Music and the Making of a New South (University of North Carolina Press, 2004)

"Britney on the Belle Curve: Dixie in the Life of an American Pop Princess," in The [Next] Reader: Reading and Writing About Popular Culture, Laura Gray-Rosendale, ed., New York: McGraw Hill Publishers (forthcoming).

"Classical Music and the Politics of Gender, 1900-1925," American Music 21 (Winter 2003): 446-473.

Personal Interests

In my spare time I enjoy photography. Whenever time and weather permit, I take some time away from the office to visit famous Kyoto sites and to see how they look different depending upon the season, the time of day, and the kind of weather. Photography relaxes me and gives me a chance to exercise another part of my brain. I also enjoy listening to music of many kinds, and learning about Japanese pop music.

Research Interests

Broadly speaking I am a cultural historian with a special interest in the American South. I have recently published a book titled, Music and the Making of a New South (UNC Press, 2004) which examines how white and black Southerners used their patronage of opera, old-time fiddling, and slave-era spirituals to articulate and to debate their vision for what could be "new" about the New South. I have also researched and published fairly widely in the field of American music and cultural history, including essays on Janis Joplin and whiteness, Britney Spears and the Southern belle myth, and the African American slave Christmas festival called the "John Kuner." I am now working on a project about the Virginia composer and white supremacist John Powell (1882-1963). I am interested in examining how the interest he shared with a large number of composers keen on writing an "American" style of concert music in the period roughly from 1893 to around 1930 connected to issues of race, citizenship, and Southern identity. In this current research, as in all my work, I continue to be fascinated by the ways in which music "works" within a society. I am persistently intrigued by how people create and contest meanings for music that extend into areas of political and cultural life far outside the contexts of specific performances.

Courses

American Civilization I and II

History and Culture of the American South

Popular Culture in Theory and Practice