“‘Remember Those Beautiful Songs’: Preserving Antebellum Cultural Practices Through Music Collection During the Civil War” (American Music 38, no. 3) focuses on two binder’s volumes that belonged to Nora Gardner, a young woman from Tennessee, and how they reflect her cultural milieu during the war.
Charleston Belles Abroad: The Music Collections of Harriet Lowndes, Henrietta Aiken, and Louisa Rebecca McCord (2019, University of South Carolina Press) examines the binder’s volumes and other music that belonged to these women in detail.
Music and the Southern Belle: From Accomplished Lady to Confederate Composer (2010, Southern Illinois University Press) uses information from binder’s volumes to contextualize music in women’s lives from about 1835 to 1865.
“Binder’s Volumes as Commonplace Books: The Transmission of Cultural Codes in the Antebellum South” (Journal of the Society for American Music 10, 446-469) demonstrates how binder’s volumes that belonged to women from different social classes display common values.
Other work can be found in my CV, including examinations of the music collection of Anna Johnson, a free Black woman who lived in antebellum Natchez, MS.
