Biography
David W. Stowe teaches religious studies at Michigan State University, where he served from 2014-16 as chair of the English Department. His most recent book is Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137 (Oxford, 2016). His previous book was No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (UNC Press 2011). How Sweet the Sound: Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans (Harvard, 2004), won the Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP. Stowe’s first book, Swing Changes: Big Band Jazz in New Deal America (Harvard, 1994), was published in Japanese by Hosei University Press. He published his first novel, Learning from Loons, in 2020. While on leave from Michigan State University, Stowe taught at Doshisha University’s Graduate School of American Studies in Kyoto, Japan, where he also served as Associate Dean. During the 2012-13 academic year, Stowe held a research fellowship at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music. EducationPh.D., Yale University, 1993B.A., Haverford College, 1983Principle Scholarly InterestsU.S. cultural history, music and religion, jazz history
Works
WORK IN PROGRESS
Billings: An American Life. Biographical study of America’s first major home-grown composer, who lived in 18th-century Boston, worked as a leather tanner and consorted with Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Also collaborating with Dr. Leonard Raybon of Tulane on a musical program, “The Billings Pendulum,” to be performed around the country in 2025 and 2026.
BOOKS
Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137. Oxford University Press, 2016.
No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism. University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Paperback 2013
The United States and the World: Popular Culture in Global Perspective. Co-authored with Ann Larabee. Great River Technologies, 2010.
How Sweet the Sound: Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans. Harvard University Press, 2004. 2005 Deems Taylor Award for outstanding work on music, presented by ASCAP.Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title, 2005.
Generation Y Speaks Out: Public Policy Perspectives Through Service Learning, co-edited with Christopher Buck and Shanetta Martin. Lansing: Michigan Nonprofit Association, 2002.
Swing Changes: Big-Band Jazz in New Deal America. Harvard University Press, 1994. (Japanese translation published by Hosei University Press, November 1999.)
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
“Four Books on Music and Religion.” Reading Religion, 10 June 2025.
“Reeling religion: from anime and sci-fi to rom-coms, films are full of faith in unexpected places.” The Conversation, 6 March 2024.
“Christmas isn’t always holly jolly – even some of its best-loved songs are bittersweet.” The Conversation. 21 December 2022.
“Op-Ed: A blue Christmas song can be a comfort, when everyone else seems to feel joy.” The Los Angeles Times, 20 December 2022.
“Thanksgiving hymns are a few centuries old, tops – but biblical psalms of gratitude and praise go back thousands of years.” The Conversation, 21 November 2022.
“Rock music has had sympathy for God as well as the devil – Kennedy Center honoree Amy Grant is just one big star who’s walked the line between ‘Christian’ and ‘secular’ music.”
The Conversation, 10 November 2022.
“A Virtual Fieldwork Project in the Age of COVID, American Religious Sounds Project, 2021.
“Were the Hebrew prophets Axial Age philosophers?” Academia Letters, June 2021.
“Teaching Digitally with the ARSP,” American Religious Sounds Project, 2020.
“Reggae’s sacred roots and call to protest injustice.” The Conversation, 29 June 2018.
“Religion and Race in American Music,” in the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History, co-edited by Paul Harvey and Kathryn Gin Lum. Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 256-259.
“Songs of worship: Why we sing to the Lord.” New Profiles Course 3. Schildts & Söderströms, 2017, pp. 33-40.
“Why a 2,500-year-old Hebrew poem still matters.” The Conversation, 27 July 2017.
“Why on July 4 should we remember the psalm ‘By the Rivers of Babylon.’” The Conversation, 30 June 2017
“Songs of worship: why we sing to the Lord.” The Conversation, 9 February 2017. Reprinted in Pastoral Music, May 2017, pp. 17-19.
“History, Memory, and Forgetting in Psalm 137.” In The Bible in the Public Square, edited by Mark A. Chancey, Carol Meyers, and Eric M. Meyers. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014, pp. 137-57.
“’Only Visiting This Planet’ (album)—Larry Norman (1972).” Guest post, National Recording Registry, Library of Congress (2014).
“Babylon Revisited: Psalm 137 as American Protest Song,” Black Music Research Journal 31:1 (Spring 2012), pp. 95-112.
“Swing and Big Bands,” Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Continuum, 2012, pp. 473-78.
“Jesus Christ Rock Star,” New York Times, 24 April 2011, p. WK9.
“Both American and Global: Jazz and World Religions in the United States,” Religion Compass 4:5 (May 2010), pp. 312-23.
“Christian Music” (6,000 word entry) for the Encyclopedia of Religion in America. CQ Press, 2010, pp. 1458-1466.
Interview included in The Spiritual Significance of Music, edited by Justin St. Vincent. www.xtrememusic.org/authors.html, 2009.
“Kafe Sosaethi no Porithikkusu,” in Theory and Practice in American Studies: Cultural Politics in a Multiracial Society. Kyoto: Sekaishisosha Press, 2007, pp. 83-119 (in Japanese).
“’Jazz That Eats Rice’: The Roots Music of Toshiko Akiyoshi,” Afro-Asian Crosscultural Encounters, edited by Heike Raphael-Hernandez and Shannon Tween. New York University Press, 2006, pp. 277-94.
“The Diasporic Imagination of Wynton Marsalis,” “The Diasporic Imagination of Wynton Marsalis.” In The Black Urban Community: From Dusk Till Dawn, edited by Gayle Tate. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006, pp. 438-48.
“Transatlantic Exchange in Protestant Revival Hymnody.” In Hans Krabbendam and Derek Jewell, eds., Religion in America (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2004).
“Sun Ra: From Ephrata (F-Ra-Ta) to Arkestra.” Esoterica 5 (2003), pp. 1-26, available at www.esoteric.msu.edu/Contents.html
“’An Inestimable Blessing’: The American Gospel Invasion of 1873.” ATQ 16:3 (September 2002), 189-212.
“Amerika-kenkyu ni okeru hakujinsei no shomondai” (“The Strange Career of Whiteness in American Studies”), trans. Sakashita Fumiko. Doshisha Amerika Kenkyu 36, March 2000, pp. 33-44.
“Ongaku no shakaiteki oyobi rekishiteki rikai ni mukete: ‘saboi de sutonpu’ o rei ni” (“Understanding Music Socially and Historically: The Case of ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’”), trans. Torii Yusuke. Doshisha Amerika Kenkyu 35, March 1999, pp. 71-87.
“Reading Race Traitor: The Future of Whiteness in America.” Journal of American Studies [Korea] 30, Winter 1998, pp. 555-572.
“The Politics of Cafe Society.” Journal of American History 84, March 1998, pp. 1384-1406.
“Uncolored People: The Rise of Whiteness Studies.” Lingua Franca 6, Sept./Oct. 1996, 68-77.
“Just Do It: How to Beat the Copyright Racket.” Lingua Franca 6, December 1995, pp. 32-42.
“Jazz in the West: Cultural Frontier and Region During the Swing Era.” Western Historical Quarterly 23, February 1992, pp. 53-73.
“The Opposers Are Much Enraged: Religious Conflict and Separation in New Haven During the Great Awakening, 1741-1760.” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 56, Summer/Fall 1991, pp. 210-235.
College of Arts & Letters News
- CAL in the ClassroomCollege of Arts & Letters
November 16, 2020Alumni and retired faculty and staff had the opportunity to attend a virtual event on November 7 where attendees got an insider’s look at the research and education of MSU’s College Arts & Letters while networking with fellow alumni, faculty, and students.
- CAL Alumni Association Presents Faculty AwardsCollege of Arts & Letters
April 22, 2016Joined by the College of Arts & Letters Alumni Association Board (photo bottom right), and CAL staff members, Acting Dean Elizabeth H. Simmons presented the 2015 CAL Alumni Association Faculty Awards at a brunch and awards ceremony conducted Saturday, April 11 at the Kellogg […] Read Now →
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