Formulating Foster

Formulating Foster humanizes the composer Stephen C. Foster (1826--64), long regarded as a founding father in American cultural history, pulling him down from the pedestal on which he has been placed to thoughtfully examine what we actually know about him versus what has been said. To that end, Christopher Lynch investigates the origins of myths portraying him as the father of American music and a symbol of American democracy, exposing them to have been deliberately designed to conceal troubling aspects of his life and music.

Christopher Lynch, PhD, is a musicologist and Head of the Theodore M. Finney Music Library in the University of Pittsburgh Library System, where he helps curate the Stephen Foster Memorial museum and archive. His research examines minstrelsy, popular song, and music theater as sites for contesting American ideals. He is co-editor of Listening Across Borders: Musicology in the Global Classroom and his work has been published in numerous journals.

- Introductory Essay: Remembering the Life and Works of Stephen C. Foster
- Part I. Competing Narratives after Foster's Death
- 1: An Obituary of Stephen C. Foster (1864)
- 2: Two Letters by Henry Baldwin Foster (1864)
- 3: Reminiscences of George W. Birdseye (1867)
- 4: Reminiscences of Robert P. Nevin (1867)
- 5: Reminiscences of John Mahon (1877)
- 6: An Interview with an Anonymous Pittsburgh Acquaintance (1879)
- 7: An Interview with Rebecca Shiras Morris and Joan Sloan Shiras (1879)
- 8: An Interview with Samuel S. Sanford (1882)
- 9: An "Anonymous" Interview with Morrison Foster and George C. Cooper (ca. 1888)
- 10: An Interview with an Anonymous "Acquaintance" (1889)
- Part II. Memorializing Foster at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- 11: Reminiscences of Kit Clarke (1893)
- 12: An Interview with Jane Foster Wiley (1895)
- 13: An Interview with Frank Dumont and a Pittsburgh Lady (1895)
- 14: Two Interviews with Susan Pentland Robinson (1895)
- 15: An Interview with John H. Cassidy (1895)
- 16: An Interview with J. William Pope (1895)
- 17: An Interview with a "Prosperous Merchant" (1895)
- 18: An Interview with Jehu Haworth (1895)
- 19: An Interview with Marion Foster Welch (1895)
- 20: Two Interviews with William Hamilton (1895)
- 21: An Interview with an Art Dealer (1895)
- 22: An Interview with a St. Louis Businessman (1895)
- 23: An Interview with a "Prominent Pittsburgher" (1895)
- 24: Morrison Foster's Sketch of His Brother's Life (1896)
- 25: An Interview with the "Foster Serenaders" (1900)
- 26: An Interview with Rachel E. Woods (1900)
- 27: An Interview with the Daughter of a Friend (1900)
- 28: An Interview with William P. T. Jope (1900)
- 29: An Interview with Maria Beabout (1900)
- 30: Reminiscences of George C. Cooper (1902)
- 31: Recollections from Classmates at the Athens Academy (1905/1911)
- Part III. Remembering Foster after the NAACP's 1914 Protests
- 32: Reminiscences of Susan McFarland Parkhurst (1916)
- 33: A "Letter" by W. W. Kingsbury (1905/1916)
- 34: An Interview with B. D. M. Eaton (ca. 1916)
- 35: Harry Houdini's Take on Kit Clarke's Memories of Foster (1916)
- 36: Reminiscences of John W. Robinson (1920)
- 37: More Reminiscences from George C. Cooper (1920)
- 38: An Interview with Marion Foster Welch (1924)
- 39: An Interview with Marion Foster Welch (1929)
- 40: Family Memories Relayed by the Grandson of Thomas "Daddy" Rice (1931)
- 41: An Interview with Katherine Schoenberger Mygatt and Martha Stough (1934)
- 42: Jessie Welsh Rose Relays Her Grandmother's Memories (1926/1934)
- Conclusion: After Archival Amnesty: Toward a New View of Stephen C. Foster
- Appendices