David Stowe
- David Stowe
Professor
American Studies
E-mail: stowed@msu.edu
Personal Homepage:
https://www.msu.edu/~wrac/
faculty_staff/stowe.html
Office: 286 Bessey Hall
Office phone: 517-355-2400
Education
Ph.D., Yale University, 1993
B.A., Haverford College, 1983
Principal Scholarly
Interests
U.S. cultural history, music and religion, jazz history
Biographical Profile
My first research interests were jazz history and the pragmatist tradition in American philosophy; my first book was a cultural history of big-band jazz in the context of New Deal America. For three years I taught in a graduate school of American Studies at Doshisha University in Japan, where I became interested in studying American culture in a transnational context, with particular attention to the U.S. and Japan. I also began teaching a course on American sacred music which eventually resulted in my second book, How Sweet the Sound: Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans (2004). I recently finished a book manuscript titled No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Rock and the Rise of the Religious Right, and am working with a filmmaker to make a documentary focusing on this topic.
My courses at MSU include a large lecture version of IAH 201, U.S. and the World, which investigates transnational flows of popular culture in and out of North America: an IAH 211B course on music and religion of the Asia-Pacific; and an American Studies graduate seminar on music, culture and power. I look forward to teaching Religious Studies classes focusing on music as lived religion both in North America and globally, and the politics of religion.
