Fall 2010 - University of Illinois Press

Music / American Cultural History
Folklore / Literary Studies
NEW IN PAPER
Traveling Home
Sacred Harp Singing and
American Pluralism
Kiri Miller
The participatory tradition of Sacred Harp
singing fosters a diverse musical community
“Traveling Home is an extraordinary
intellectual and social
achievement. Miller has broken
new ground in the study of
American religious music.”
—Journal of the Society for
American Music
“Miller explains every aspect
of the musical practice as both
an observer and participant.
The book is essential reading
for anyone who has ever been
stirred by singing the shapes.”
—Sing Out!
“Evocative, nuanced, never reductionistic, Miller’s explorations
of this vibrant tradition of American hymnody merit
attention in Sacred Harp circles and beyond.”
—Christian Century
Traveling Home is a compelling account of how the vibrant
musical tradition of Sacred Harp singing brings together
Americans of widely divergent religious and political
beliefs. Named after the most popular of the nineteenthcentury
shape-note tunebooks—which employed an innovative
notation system to teach singers to read music—Sacred
Harp singing has been part of rural southern life for more
than 150 years and has recently attracted new singers from
all over America. Blending historical scholarship with
wide-ranging fieldwork, Kiri Miller presents an engagingly
written study of this important music movement.
Kiri Miller is an assistant professor of music at Brown
University and the editor of The Chattahoochee Musical Convention,
1852–2002: A Sacred Harp Historical Sourcebook.
A volume in the series Music in American Life
AUGUST
272 PAGES. 6 x 9 INCHES.
24 BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS, 14 MUSICAL EXAMPLES,
2 TABLES
PAPER, 978-0-252-07757-9. $25.00s £16.99
NEW IN PAPER
Other People’s Stories
Entitlement Claims and the Critique
of Empathy
Amy Shuman
A critical assessment of collective memories,
small world stories, and other allegories of
everyday life
“A major and positively delightful
work from one of the most
consistently thoughtful, rigorous,
engaging, and provocative
scholars in the field.”
—Don Brenneis, past president
of the American Anthropological
Association
“In Other People’s Stories,
Shuman undertakes a critique
of empathy, rooted in the
examination of what she calls
stories that travel: subversive
stories, emancipatory stories, redemptive stories, and that
astonishing and quirky new genre: small world stories. The
book is bold, philosophically profound, and ethnographically
adventurous.”
—Katharine Young, author of Taleworlds and Storyrealms:
The Phenomenology of Narrative
“A fascinating and timely study that offers convincing assessments
of the stories and coincidences of everyday life.”
—Robert Barsky, author of Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
Amy Shuman examines the social relations embedded in
stories and the complex ethical and social tensions that
surround their telling. Drawing on innovative research and
contemporary theory, she describes what happens when one
person’s story becomes another person’s source of inspiration,
or when entitlement and empathy collide. The resulting
analyses are wonderfully diverse, integrating narrative
studies, sociolinguistics, communications, folklore, and ethnographic
studies to examine the everyday, conversational
stories told by cultural groups including Latinas, Jews, African
Americans, Italians, and Puerto Ricans. Shuman offers
a nuanced and clear theoretical perspective while making
narrative inquiry accessible to a broad population.
Amy Shuman is a professor of English and an adjunct professor
of anthropology at the Ohio State University.
AUGUST
200 PAGES. 6 x 9 INCHES.
PAPER, 978-0-252-07774-6. $25.00s £16.99
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