More Than "Precious Memories": The Rhetoric of Southern Gospel Music

More than Precious Memories is the first book of its kind-a collection of essays offering scholarly analysis and interpretation of Southern Gospel Music. Believing Southern Gospel Music to be a significant cultural and religious phenomenon worthy of the best efforts of scholarship, Graves and Fillingim have assembled a diverse group of scholars who apply a variety of methods and theories to the task of understanding Southern Gospel Music and its cultural context. These scholars and approaches include the following. Scott Tucker, looks at the theme of "heaven" in six of the Gaither Homecoming songbooks David Fillingim looks at how Southern Gospel Music answers the question of theodicy from the perspective of the rural, white, working class Robert M. McManus explores selected song lyrics to show how Southern Gospel Music helps construct the identity of the community compared to Contemporary Christian Music Darlene R. Graves identifies key sustaining personality strengths of women that tend to preserve consistency between their public performance and personal spiritual walk Elizabeth F. Desnoyers-Colas and Stephanie Howard (Asabi) explore Southern Gospel and Black Gospel music, through the influence of Thomas A. Dorsey Michael Graves examines how the culture of Southern Gospel Music deals with its inevitable prodigal sons Raymond D.S. Anderson analyzes the Gaither Homecoming videos as examples of the postmodern turn in American popular Christian culture John D. Keeler presents the first audience study of Southern Gospel Music employing a "Uses and Gratifications" research framework Paul A. Creasman examines the ways Southern Gospel Music as a culture memorializes its dead by use of the Internet Naaman Wood reviews significant scholarly approaches to the study of popular musicDavid Fillingim is the author of 'More Than "Precious Memories": The Rhetoric of Southern Gospel Music' with ISBN 9780865548572 and ISBN 0865548579.