Gayle Wald
Gayle Wald
Professor of American Studies
Contact:
Email:
Gayle Wald
2108 G Street
2108 G Street, NW
Washington DC 20052
I am an interdisciplinary scholar of American culture (PhD in English) with specific interests in African American culture, including music, television, and literature. My latest book, This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press in 2025. My other books include Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Beacon; 2nd edition 2023) and It's Been Beautiful": Soul! and Black Power TV (Duke University Press, 2015).
In general my work Is concerned with questions of cultural agency and cultural memory. These themes thread through my many articles and essays on popular music, from Motown girl groups to "girly" boy bands. “’A queer black woman invented rock-and-roll’: Rosetta Tharpe, Memes, and Memory Practices in the Digital Age,” from Feminist Media Studies (2020), explores cultural knowledge-production in the digital age. I have co-edited the Journal of Popular Music Studies and Bloomsbury’s 33-1/3 series of books on record albums. My work has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Popular music; African American cultural history; cultural theory; feminist and gender studies; biography
Ph.D. Princeton University, 1995
B.A., University of Virginia, 1987
Books
(In progress) “This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement”
It's Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power Television ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).
Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe ( Boston: Beacon Press, 2007).
Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in 20th-Century U.S. Literature and Culture. New Americanists series. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).
Recent Articles
“Gospel Music,” in The World of Bob Dylan, ed. Sean Latham (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 88-99.
“‘A queer black woman invented rock-and-roll’: Rosetta Tharpe, Memes, and Memory Practices in the Digital Age,” Feminist Media Studies. Published online 15 December 2020.
“‘It’s Awfully Important to Listen: Ella Jenkins and Musical Multiculturalism,” Current Musicology 104 (Spring 2019): 45-68.
“'Deliver de Letter': 'Please Mr. Postman," the Marvelettes, and the Afro-Caribbean Imaginary," Journal of Popular Music Studies, 24, 3 (2012): 325-32.
"Soul Vibrations: Black Music and Black Freedom in Sound and Space,” American Quarterly 63, 3 (2011): 673-96.
“Dreaming of Michael Jackson: Notes on Jewish Listening,” Casden Annual, 8 (2011): 1-8.
“Passing Strange and post-civil rights blackness,” Humanities Research 16, 1 (2010), np. (online publication). Special Issue on “Passing, Imitations, Crossings” edited by Monique Rooney and Carolyn Strange.
"Rosetta Tharpe and Feminist 'Un-forgetting,'" Journal of Women's History 21, 4 (Winter 2009): 157-160.
"Same Difference: Racial Masculinity in Hong Kong and Cop-Buddy 'Hybrids,'" in Chinese Connections: Critical Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora, ed. Tan See-Kam, Peter X Feng, and Gina Marchetti (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2009), 68-81.
"Women Do Dylan: The Aesthetics and Politics of Dylan Covers," (with Daphne Brooks) Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World, ed. Colleen J. Sheehy and Thomas Swiss (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2009.)
“Reviving Rosetta Tharpe: Performance and Memory in the 21 st Century,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory16, 1 (March 2006): 91-106.
“Have a Little Talk: Listening to the B-side of History,” Popular Music 24, 3 (2005): 323-37. Cited as a "Notable Essay of 2005" in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006: The Year's Finest Writing on Rock, Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop, Country, and More, ed. Mary Gaitskill and Daphne Carr (New York: Da Capo, 2006).
“From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover,” American Quarterly 55, 3 (September 2003): 387-416.
“'I Want It That Way’: Teenybopper Music and the Girling of Boy Bands.” Genders 35 (Spring 2001).
“Clueless in the Neocolonial World Order.” Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism and Film Theory, 42 (September 1999): 51-69.
Popular Music and Politics
U.S. Popular Music and Culture
Black Literature and Black Theory
Post-Civil Rights African American Literature and Culture
Cultural History
Writing about Music (creative non-fiction class)
Cultures of Civil Rights
The World of Bob Dylan (first-year seminar)