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About Emily Ruth Allen

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research is about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival.

NBN Episodes hosted by Emily Ruth:

Music August 12, 2022

Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals

Christopher M. Reali

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul …
Music August 1, 2022

Following the Drums

African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee

John M. Shaw

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee (University Press of Mississippi,  2022) is an epic history of a little-known African American instrumental music form. Carefully documenting the …
Celebration Studies April 26, 2022

Mardi Gras Beads

Doug MacCash

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
The first in a new LSU Press series exploring facets of Louisiana’s iconic culture, Mardi Gras Beads (2022) delves into the history of this celebrated New Orleans artifact, explaining how Mardi …
Music March 11, 2022

Atomic Tunes

The Cold War in American and British Popular Music

Tim Smolko and Joanna Smolko

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
During the Cold War, over 500 songs were written about nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, civil defense, bomb shelters, McCarthyism, uranium mining, the space race, espionage, the Berlin …
Music January 7, 2022

Sounding Together

Collaborative Perspectives on U. S. Music in the 21st Century

Carol J. Oja and Charles Garrett

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett and Carol J. Oja, Sounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Music in the Twenty-21st Century (University of Michigan Press, 2021) is a multi-authored, collaboratively conceived book of essays that …
Music January 5, 2022

Chapel of Love

The Story of New Orleans Girl Group the Dixie Cups

Rosa Hawkins and Steve Bergsman

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In 1963, sisters Barbara Ann and Rosa Hawkins and their cousin Joan Marie Johnson traveled from the segregated South to New York City under the auspices of their manager, former …
Music October 18, 2021

A Punkhouse in the Deep South

The Oral History Of 309

Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Told in personal interviews, A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309 (University Press of Florida, 2021) is the collective story of a punk community in an unlikely …
Music October 4, 2021

Echoes of the Great Catastrophe

Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora

Panayotis F. League

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora (University of Michigan Press, 2021) explores the legacy of the Great Catastrophe—the death and expulsion from Turkey of 1.5 million Greek Christians …
Japanese Studies September 6, 2021

Maiko Masquerade

Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan

Jan Bardsley

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan (University of California Press, 2021) explores Japanese representations of the maiko, or apprentice geisha, in films, manga, and other popular media as an icon of …
Celebration Studies August 6, 2021

Festive Enterprise

The Business of Drama in Medieval and Renaissance England

Jill P. Ingram

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In Festive Enterprise: The Business of Drama in Medieval and Renaissance England (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), Dr. Jill Ingram merges the history of economic thought with studies of theatricality and spectatorship …
Music August 5, 2021

Rough Tactics

Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932

Mark A. Johnson

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
During the nadir of race relations in the United States South from 1877 to 1932, African Americans faced segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching. Among many forms of resistance, African Americans used …
Music July 13, 2021

Unbinding Gentility

Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South

Candace Bailey

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Southern women of all classes, races, and walks of life practiced music during and after the Civil War. Dr. Candace Bailey examines the history of southern women through the lens …
Celebration Studies June 25, 2021

Rituality and Social (Dis)Order

The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe

Alessandro Testa

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe (Routledge, 2020) is the first comparative historical anthropology of popular European Carnival in the English language, with a focus on its …
Celebration Studies June 9, 2021

Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas

Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

Cécile Fromont

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Dr. Cécile Fromont, Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition (Penn State University Press, 2019), demonstrates how, from the beginning of the Atlantic …
Performing Arts May 21, 2021

Staging Indigeneity

Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History

Katrina Phillips

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
As tourists increasingly moved across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a surprising number of communities looked to capitalize on the histories of Native American …
Music April 30, 2021

In Concert

Performing Musical Persona

Philip Auslander

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Throughout In Concert: Performing Musical Persona (University of Michigan Press, 2021), Dr. Philip Auslander addresses not only the visual means by which musicians engage their audiences through costume and physical gesture …
Music April 19, 2021

Chronicling Stankonia

The Rise of the Hip-Hop South

Regina N. Bradley

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) pulses with the beats of a new American South, probing the ways music, literature, and film have remixed …
Popular Culture April 5, 2021

Millennials Killed the Video Star

MTV's Transition to Reality Programming

Amanda Ann Klein

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In Millennials Killed the Video Star: MTV’s Transition to Reality Programming (Duke University Press, 2021), Dr. Amanda Ann Klein examines the historical, cultural, and industrial factors leading to MTV's shift away from music videos …
Music March 11, 2021

Chocolate Surrealism

Music, Movement, Memory, and History in the Circum-Caribbean

Njoroge M. Njoroge

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In Chocolate Surrealism: Music, Movement, Memory, and History in the Circum-Caribbean (University Press of Mississippi, 2016), Dr. Njoroge M. Njoroge highlights connections among the production, performance, and reception of popular music at critical …
Celebration Studies February 10, 2021

The Ethnography of Tourism

Edward Bruner and Beyond

Naomi M. Leite, Quetzil E. Castañeda, Kathleen Adams

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Naomi M. Leite, Quetzil E. Castañeda, and Kathleen M. Adams, The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond (Lexington Books, 2019) focuses on the experience-near, interpretive-humanistic approach to tourism studies widely associated …
Celebration Studies February 9, 2021

Jump Up!

Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City

Ray Allen

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Jump Up!: Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a comprehensive history of Trinidadian calypso and steelband music in the diaspora. Blending urban studies, oral history, archival research …
Celebration Studies February 4, 2021

Festive Devils of the Americas

Milla Cozart Riggio, Angela Marino, and Paolo Vignolo

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
The devil is a defiant, nefarious figure, the emblem of evil, and harbinger of the damned. However, the festive devil—the devil that dances—turns the most hideous acts into playful transgressions …
Celebration Studies January 19, 2021

City of a Million Dreams

A History of New Orleans at Year 300

Jason Berry

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Jason Berry delivers a history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Beyond …
Celebration Studies December 23, 2020

The Oxford Handbook of Christmas

Timothy Larsen

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Dr. Timothy Larsen, The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (Oxford University Press, 2020) provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of all aspects of Christmas across the globe, from the specifically religious to the …