Stephen Foster was born on July 4th, 1826 as America celebrated its jubilee Independence Day. He was the composer of many popular early American songs including “Oh! Susanna," “Camptown Races,” and “Swanee River." As we approach the 250th anniversary of American Independence and the 200th anniversary of Foster’s birth, it is high time for a critical reappraisal of his legacy. Join hosts Jason Lee Guthrie and Jennie Lightweis-Goff as they interview the experts and decipher the coded history of American music on Stephen Foster at 200.
"Making Race and Popular Music in the U. S." with Matthew D. Morrison
On today's episode, Jason talks with Matthew D. Morrison about his extensive researches into the history of race and early American popular music. Matthew is an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. He is a musicologist and the award-winning author of Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (https://blacksoundbook.com). A proud native of Charlotte, North Carolina, our conversation covers our shared love for the South, and our shared interest in the ways that the history of copyright law can illuminate inequities within the American creative industries.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
27 Oct 2026
"The Future of Foster Research" with Deane Root
On today's episode, Jennie talks with Deane Root, a name that's familiar to many scholars of music history. Deane is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was the Founding Director of the Center for American Music. Adding to his truly extensive list of publications on Stephen Foster, Deane has recently written a state-by-state breakdown on where to find primary sources for future Foster researchers. This episodes features a granular conversation on what it means to research a long-dead culture maker, how we assemble meaning and sources, and ends by discussing Dean's native Kentucky.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
20 Oct 2026
"The Foster Hall Quartet" with Emily Bingham
On today's episode, Jennie talks with Emily Bingham, author of My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song (https://emilybingham.net/books/my-old-kentucky-home/). "My Old Kentucky Home" is one of Foster's travel songs. His music traveled further from home than the songwriter ever did, and the song has reverberated, becoming an essential part of institutions like the Kentucky Derby. Emily is a native of Louisville and a visiting professor at Bellarmine University. We discuss Emily's research on the Foster Hall Quartet, G.M. Robinson, E.W. Hammond, W.W. Wolfek, and C.E. Hicks. And of course, we amble in the Ohio River Valley, the conurbated region of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio that both Emily and Stephen Foster called home.
The Foster Hall Collection holds a recording of the Quartet performing Foster’s “My Brudder Gum,” shared here in full with permission from the Center for American Music (https://library.pitt.edu/center-american-music) at The University of Pittsburgh.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com. (w.StephenFosterAt200.com.)
13 Oct 2026
"Hard Times Come Again No More" with Joanna Smolko
On today's episode, Jason talks with Joanna Smolko about a Foster song entitled “Hard Times Come Again No More” that has enjoyed a unique afterlife. Joanna is an Instructor of Music at the University of Georgia and her areas of research include popular music, musical borrowing, American sacred music traditions like shape-note hymn singing, American folk music, and the intersections between American history and music. In our conversation we touch on Joanna’s previous research into the use of Foster’s music in twentieth century popular media as well as her current work that explores how covers of Foster’s songs by contemporary artists like Bruce Springsteen continue to shape our collective memory of him.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
6 Oct 2026
"The Stephen Foster Story" with Cody Ebright-Jones
On today's episode, Jason talks with Cody Ebright-Jones about The Stephen Foster Story, a musical performed outdoors during the summer months in Bardstown, Kentucky. Cody is an independent scholar with a recent PhD in Musicology from the University of Michigan and studies the intersections of music, race, and history in the United States. As we discuss, The Stephen Foster Story is a complex, evolving mosaic that reflects contemporary attitudes about race in popular culture as much as it does the history of early American popular music.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
29 Sept 2026
"The Pre-Foster History of Minstrelsy" with Renee Lapp Norris
On today's episode, Jennie talks with Renee Lapp Norris, Professor of Music at Lebanon Valley College. Renee researches blackface minstrelsy and performance. She defines and challenges the form and its working-class roots in today's conversation. In this episode, we consider the split between performance and composition in the 19th century, and how the fact that Stephen Foster composed rather than performed for the blackface stage might have enhanced his reputation in the 20th century. Of course, Foster the composer was linked through financial and artistic ties to Christy the performer. Renee also introduces us to the Christy song "Happy Are We" and the musical genre of the contrafact.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
22 Sept 2026
"Stephen Foster's songs in Japan and Beyond" with Kazuko Miyashita
On today's episode, we’ll hear from Kazuko Miyashita about Stephen Foster’s music in Japan. Kazuko is a Professor Emerita and has published extensively on the influence of Foster’s music in her native country. Due to the time difference, Kazuko recorded a brief summary of her work and shared that with me for the podcast rather than attempting a live interview. Her contribution is highly valued, though, as exploring the influence of Foster’s work outside of the United States is an important frontier in the future of Foster studies.
Continuing with the international theme of this episode, my co-host Jennie will share some of her own experiences with Foster’s music while in China, and tell us some of the context behind “Oh! Oksana,” the Russian language cover of Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna” that plays at the end of each episode. We’ll end the episode by playing “Oh! Oksana” in full, adapted and performed by Dan Veksler.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
15 Sept 2026
"Stephen Foster and the State of Florida" with Esther Morgan-Ellis
On today's episode, Jason talks with Esther Morgan-Ellis about Foster’s memory in the state of Florida. Esther is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Georgia, but in her travels further south she discovered a unique history of pageantry and music-making at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida. Esther studies and writes about participatory music-making practices of the past and present. In our conversation she offers unique insight into how a chance lyric in a famous Foster song and an apocryphal story about his antebellum travels to the South created an annual singing competition in the mid-twentieth century that still reverberates in Florida today.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
8 Sept 2026
"Stephen Foster and American Popular Culture" with Jennie Lightweis-Goff
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 (https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Blood-at-the-Root) and Captive City: Meditations on Slavery in the Urban South (https://www.pennpress.org/9781512826685/captive-city/). She is also well known to Foster scholars for her 2008 essay “Long Time I Trabble on de Way”: Stephen Foster's Conversion Narrative (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-1598.2008.00152.x)" 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 (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
1 Sept 2026
"Stephen Foster and Music Copyright" with Jason Lee Guthrie
In this episode, Jennie talks with Jason about his research into Stephen Foster and popular music copyright in early America. We also talk about how we got here and reflect on the behind-the-music narrative of Stephen Foster's rise and fall in conversation with pop culture history. Jason is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Clayton State University.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
25 Aug 2026
"Stephen Foster and William Grant Still" with Samantha Ege
In this episode, Jason talks with Samantha Ege about the connection between Stephen Foster and William Grant Still. Samantha is a pianist, musicologist, and a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Southhampton. She is a leading scholar of African American composer Florence B. Price, focusing on the Black Chicago Renaissance and Black women’s advocacy networks. She has a celebrated performance career and has received multiple prestigious awards and fellowships for her contributions to musicology. Our conversation covered the complex legacy of Stephen Foster’s songs in African-American musical performance.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
18 Aug 2026
"Stephen Foster and Gussie Davis" with Bill Brooks
In this episode, Jason talks with Bill Brooks about the connection between Stephen Foster and Gussie Davis. Bill is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois and at the University of York. He is also Senior Research Fellow and Series Editor at the Orpheus Research Centre in Ghent, Belgium. Bill has published widely in American Musicology and has had a successful composition career. He draws from his experience in both the academic and performance worlds during our conversation.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
11 Aug 2026
"Foster's Songs and Women's Music Practices" with Candace Bailey
In this episode, Jason talks with Candace Bailey about the musical lives of women in nineteenth-century America, and especially about what the binder’s volumes that women in Stephen Foster’s family used to collect sheet music can tell us about his life and legacy. Candace is a musicologist and John C. Neville Distinguished Professor at North Carolina Central University. Her research explores women and music in the nineteenth-century United States, with a focus on music in the South. Her extensive publication list includes the books Charleston Belles Abroad: The Music Collections of Harriett Lowndes, Henrietta Aiken, and Louisa Rebecca McCord (https://uscpress.com/Charleston-Belles-Abroad) and Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South (https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p085741).
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
4 Aug 2026
"Stephen Foster's Songs During the Civil War" with Jim Davis
In this episode, Jennie talks with Jim Davis, professor of musicology and chair of the music history area at SUNY Fredonia. Jim has written extensively about the music of the Civil War, expanding our conceptions of the fireside music of the front line, the fiddles and fifes of documentaries and films that represent the period. Jim and I have a wide-ranging conversation, not only about the music that Civil War soldiers knew, but also about what the 19th century sounded like. We don't sing on this podcast, but we do visit some familiar tunes from evolutions and adaptations of "Jesus Loves the Little Children" to The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
28 Jul 2026
"Foster's Early Years" with Chris Lynch
In this episode, Jason talks with Chris Lynch, about an understudied early Foster composition entitled “Where Is Thy Spirit Mary?” Chris is Head of the Theodore M. Finney Music Library at the University of Pittsburgh and has done extensive work at the Center for American Music helping to preserve and catalog primary sources related to Stephen Foster. He is a music historian with expertise on topics ranging from nineteenth-century popular song to opera and early Black gospel music. His most recent book is Formulating Foster: Stephen C. Foster and the Creation of a National Musical Myth (https://academic.oup.com/book/60544).
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
21 Jul 2026
"The 'Gift' That Keeps on Giving" with Petra Meyer-Frazier
In this episode, Jennie talks with Petra Meyer-Frazier, a musicologist who studies 19th century American music and culture. She teaches at the University of Denver and is the author of the book Bound Music, Unbound Women. Petra studies how women make and curate music, and so we talk about why Foster became the iconic American songwriter, the one 19th century songwriter that everyone remembers. We discuss the classical models he drew from, the popular forms that he adapted for his own uses, and we dwell too with the controversies that have always attended Foster's life and art, from the disreputable blackface stage during his lifetime to the 2017 removal of Foster statues in Pittsburgh.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
14 Jul 2026
"Remembering Stephen Foster" with Kathy Haines
In this episode, Jennie talks with Kathryn Miller Haynes, Head of the Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh. The center is a successor institution of the Foster Hall Collection, the cornerstone of concrete memorial culture that sprung up around Stephen Foster in the early 20th century. Kathy is also a novelist and, as you'll hear, a great conversationalist. Remembering Stephen Foster has always been a fraught enterprise, and we talk about what's changed in the last 20 years, especially the recent period of monument removal and remaking of public space.
To learn more about the Center for American music, visit their website at: https://library.pitt.edu/center-american-music (https://library.pitt.edu/center-american-music).
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
4 Jul 2026
Stephen Foster at 200
Welcome to Stephen Foster at 200, a companion podcast to the edited volume Stephen Foster at 200: A Critical Reappraisal. In this first episode, hosts Jason Lee Guthrie and Jennie Lightness-Goff sit down with Robin James, the book's editor. Our conversation covered the project's background and why we were interested in writing about Stephen Foster in 2026.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.
19 Jun 2026
Trailer: Stephen Foster at 200
On July 4th, 1826, America celebrated its jubilee Independence Day and mourned the loss of two founding fathers. It also welcomed the birth of a boy in Pittsburgh who would one day be known as the “Father of American Music.”
Stephen Foster was the composer of many popular early American songs including “Camptown Races,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Swanee River,” and “Beautiful Dreamer”. “Oh! Susanna” was not only Foster’s first hit, many people think that it’s the first hit song ever and that it helped to create the popular music industry as we know it today.
But like so many aspects of early American popular culture, the catchy melody and lighthearted lyrics of “Oh! Susanna” obscure a dark and violent reality. While many people know the earworm refrain of “I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee,” most do not know that an original verse includes a racial slur and blithely references the tragic death of 500 African Americans.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of American Independence and the 200th anniversary of Foster’s birth, it is high time for a critical reappraisal of his legacy.
Join hosts Jason Lee Guthrie and Jennie Lightweis-Goff as we interview the experts and decipher the coded history of American music on Stephen Foster at 200.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com (www.StephenFosterAt200.com).
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