Jeffrey Melnick
Biographic Data
| ID | 299344 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeffrey Melnick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeffrey |
| FAMILY NAME | Melnick |
| SIGNATURE | MELNICK J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Babson College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Immigration and American Popular Culture
How does a 'national' popular culture form and grow over time in a nation comprised of immigrants? How have immigrants used popular culture in America, and how has it used them? Immigration and American Popular Culture looks at the relationship between American immigrants and the popular culture industry in the twentieth century. Through a series of case studies, Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey Melnick uncover how specific trends in popular culture—such…
Music Wars
Pretending that John C. Hajduk's Music Wars lacks contemporary relevance will not do. While the book works as a careful review of a brief moment in the history of American popular music, it may function most significantly as a reminder that battles for control have defined the popular music business since its incorporation in the late nineteenth century. Not reading the book as offering helpful frameworks for our own time and for the knotty quest…
Democracy of Sound
Journal Article Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century Get access Alex Sayf Cummings. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xiv, 257 pp. $29.95.) Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 2, September 2014, Pages 664–665, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau490 Published: 01 September 2014
Spoken Word
This fine book about the significant cultures of nonmusical phonograph records in the half century after World War II discovers its central theoretical premise in chapter 3, in which Jacob Smith quotes the anthropologist Karin Barber, who insists that performances do not “just play to ready-made congregations” (p. 80). In fact, as Barber argues, performances “convene” audiences and “by their mode of address assign them a certain position from whi…
Get Your War On
This pedagogical essay invites readers to consider how the work of cultural "first responders" to the 9/11 attacks-most notably David Rees, with his online comic Get Your War On-reached students at a small business college in the Northeast. Melnick is interested, above all, in tracking what he calls "stages" of student response to materials that initially seem too radical or culturally challenging. This essay explores how rapidly in the "post-9/1…
Group Harmony
According to the deep and consequential folklore that surrounds the vocal group music of the 1950s and early 1960s that would later be named “doo wop” by ardent revivalists, something like fifteen thousand bands were plying this trade at any moment during that era. This unverifiable “fact,” first published in fan-based works, and then repeated (and embroidered) by Greil Marcus and other mythologizers, is a central agent of what is now a decadeslo…
Race and the modern artist
A Black Man in Jewface
In his printed autobiography, the African American stride pianist Willie the Lion Smith outlines unflinchingly how musical materials circulated in New York during the 1910s and 1920s. Throughout this “as-told-to” memoir Smith relates how non-African Americans (usually Jews) appropriated musical styles developed by African Americans. Smith offers one anecdote in particular that provides a sharp accounting of the complex interactions between Jewish…
Fighting to Become Jews
Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America. By Michael Staub. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 386 pages. $29.50 (cloth). MICHAEL STAUB'S TORN AT THE ROOTS MODESTLY CALLS ITSELF A STUDY OF THE "crisis of Jewish liberalism" but really encompasses so much more than that. Published at the same time that Camp David and Oslo devolved into the second Intifidah and increased Israeli aggression against Palestinians, a…
Black-Jewish Relations on Trial
Black-Jewish Relations on Trial
Journal Article Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South. By Jeffrey Melnick. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. xiv, 165 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 1-57806-286-1. Paper, $18.00, ISBN 1-57806-287-X.) Get access Clive Webb Clive Webb University of Sussex Brighton, United Kingdom Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 89, Issue 1, June…
A Right to Sing the Blues
Journal Article A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song Get access Melnick JeffreyA Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song 1999Cambridge Harvard University Pressx277$27.95, ISBN 0-674-76976-7 Andrew R. Heinze Andrew R. Heinze University of San FranciscoSan Francisco, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American His…
A Right to Sing the Blues
Imagining Each Other
With Imagining Each Other, Ethan Goffman makes a solid contribution to the burgeoning field of Black-Jewish Studies. Academic interest in Black-Jewish relations (however one construes all the ground that phrase is meant to cover) took a decided upturn in the 1990s. Collections of essays edited by Jack Salzman, Paul Berman, Salzman and Cornel West, Maurianne Adams and John Bracey; literary studies by Emily Miller Budick and others; and works on Ho…
Using music
Using music
A Right to Sing the Blues
Romancing the Folk
American historians and American studies scholars have been notoriously shy about constructing thematically oriented overviews of American music. Where is the book that will try to tell the story of how migration and urbanization shaped twentiethcentury American music? Or one that will examine “crossover” (folk to popular, sacred to secular) as a central concept of the music? Benjamin Filene and Bryan K. Garman seem aware of this timidity in the …
Notes on the Underground
A Right to Sing the Blues
Journal Article A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song Get access Melnick JeffreyA Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song 1999Cambridge Harvard University Pressx277$27.95, ISBN 0-674-76976-7 Andrew R. Heinze Andrew R. Heinze University of San FranciscoSan Francisco, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American His…
Democracy of Sound
Journal Article Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century Get access Alex Sayf Cummings. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xiv, 257 pp. $29.95.) Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 2, September 2014, Pages 664–665, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau490 Published: 01 September 2014
Fighting to Become Jews
Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America. By Michael Staub. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 386 pages. $29.50 (cloth). MICHAEL STAUB'S TORN AT THE ROOTS MODESTLY CALLS ITSELF A STUDY OF THE "crisis of Jewish liberalism" but really encompasses so much more than that. Published at the same time that Camp David and Oslo devolved into the second Intifidah and increased Israeli aggression against Palestinians, a…
Black-Jewish Relations on Trial
Journal Article Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South. By Jeffrey Melnick. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. xiv, 165 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 1-57806-286-1. Paper, $18.00, ISBN 1-57806-287-X.) Get access Clive Webb Clive Webb University of Sussex Brighton, United Kingdom Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 89, Issue 1, June…
Notes on the Underground
A Right to Sing the Blues
Imagining Each Other
With Imagining Each Other, Ethan Goffman makes a solid contribution to the burgeoning field of Black-Jewish Studies. Academic interest in Black-Jewish relations (however one construes all the ground that phrase is meant to cover) took a decided upturn in the 1990s. Collections of essays edited by Jack Salzman, Paul Berman, Salzman and Cornel West, Maurianne Adams and John Bracey; literary studies by Emily Miller Budick and others; and works on Ho…
Using music
Using music
A Right to Sing the Blues
Romancing the Folk
American historians and American studies scholars have been notoriously shy about constructing thematically oriented overviews of American music. Where is the book that will try to tell the story of how migration and urbanization shaped twentiethcentury American music? Or one that will examine “crossover” (folk to popular, sacred to secular) as a central concept of the music? Benjamin Filene and Bryan K. Garman seem aware of this timidity in the …
Black-Jewish Relations on Trial
Black-Jewish Relations on Trial
Journal Article Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South. By Jeffrey Melnick. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. xiv, 165 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 1-57806-286-1. Paper, $18.00, ISBN 1-57806-287-X.) Get access Clive Webb Clive Webb University of Sussex Brighton, United Kingdom Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 89, Issue 1, June…
A Right to Sing the Blues
Journal Article A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song Get access Melnick JeffreyA Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song 1999Cambridge Harvard University Pressx277$27.95, ISBN 0-674-76976-7 Andrew R. Heinze Andrew R. Heinze University of San FranciscoSan Francisco, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American His…
Race and the modern artist
A Black Man in Jewface
In his printed autobiography, the African American stride pianist Willie the Lion Smith outlines unflinchingly how musical materials circulated in New York during the 1910s and 1920s. Throughout this “as-told-to” memoir Smith relates how non-African Americans (usually Jews) appropriated musical styles developed by African Americans. Smith offers one anecdote in particular that provides a sharp accounting of the complex interactions between Jewish…
Fighting to Become Jews
Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America. By Michael Staub. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 386 pages. $29.50 (cloth). MICHAEL STAUB'S TORN AT THE ROOTS MODESTLY CALLS ITSELF A STUDY OF THE "crisis of Jewish liberalism" but really encompasses so much more than that. Published at the same time that Camp David and Oslo devolved into the second Intifidah and increased Israeli aggression against Palestinians, a…
Group Harmony
According to the deep and consequential folklore that surrounds the vocal group music of the 1950s and early 1960s that would later be named “doo wop” by ardent revivalists, something like fifteen thousand bands were plying this trade at any moment during that era. This unverifiable “fact,” first published in fan-based works, and then repeated (and embroidered) by Greil Marcus and other mythologizers, is a central agent of what is now a decadeslo…
Get Your War On
This pedagogical essay invites readers to consider how the work of cultural "first responders" to the 9/11 attacks-most notably David Rees, with his online comic Get Your War On-reached students at a small business college in the Northeast. Melnick is interested, above all, in tracking what he calls "stages" of student response to materials that initially seem too radical or culturally challenging. This essay explores how rapidly in the "post-9/1…
Spoken Word
This fine book about the significant cultures of nonmusical phonograph records in the half century after World War II discovers its central theoretical premise in chapter 3, in which Jacob Smith quotes the anthropologist Karin Barber, who insists that performances do not “just play to ready-made congregations” (p. 80). In fact, as Barber argues, performances “convene” audiences and “by their mode of address assign them a certain position from whi…
Democracy of Sound
Journal Article Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century Get access Alex Sayf Cummings. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xiv, 257 pp. $29.95.) Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 2, September 2014, Pages 664–665, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau490 Published: 01 September 2014
Music Wars
Pretending that John C. Hajduk's Music Wars lacks contemporary relevance will not do. While the book works as a careful review of a brief moment in the history of American popular music, it may function most significantly as a reminder that battles for control have defined the popular music business since its incorporation in the late nineteenth century. Not reading the book as offering helpful frameworks for our own time and for the knotty quest…
Immigration and American Popular Culture
How does a 'national' popular culture form and grow over time in a nation comprised of immigrants? How have immigrants used popular culture in America, and how has it used them? Immigration and American Popular Culture looks at the relationship between American immigrants and the popular culture industry in the twentieth century. Through a series of case studies, Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey Melnick uncover how specific trends in popular culture—such…
History (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Art (13 works) · Art history (12 works) · History (9 works) · Race, History, and American Society (9 works) · Literature (8 works) · Music History and Culture (8 works) · Media studies (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)