Sandra Jean Graham: Home

About this website

Thank you for visiting! This website is a repository of my research on black late nineteenth-century popular and religious music, with a particular focus on spirituals, blackface minstrelsy, and theater. My goal is to stimulate research on black performers of this era, who remain under-studied and poorly understood.

About me

I am an ethnomusicologist in the Division of Arts and Humanities at Babson College (Wellesley, MA). I've also taught at University of California, Davis, and had visiting professorships at Davidson College, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), Academy of Music at the University of Zagreb (Croatia), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Contact

I would welcome feedback on my work and would love to know if you are working in similar areas. You can reach me at sgraham@babson.edu.

Most recent scholarship

My book Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (University of Illinois Press) received the 2019 Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society and was selected as a 2018 Choice Outstanding Title. For more information and ordering: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/59cfn2tx9780252041631.html

The companion website containing profiles of some 85 jubilee troupes can be accessed for free: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/graham/spirituals/

This page was last updated 5 May 2020.