"The Victorian cup on my shelf--a present from my mother--reads 'Love the Giver.' Is it because the very word patronage implies the authority of the father that we have treated American women patrons and activists so unlovingly in the writing of our own history? This pioneering collection of superb scholarship redresses that imbalance. At the same time it brilliantly documents the interrelationship between various aspects of gender and the creation of our own culture."--Judith Tick, author of Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music "Together with the fine-grained and energetic research, I like the spirit of this book, which is ambitious, bold, and generous minded. Cultivating Music in America corrects long-standing prejudices, omissions, and misunderstandings about the role of women in setting up the structures of America's musical life, and, even more far-reaching, it sheds light on the character of American musical life itself. To read this book is to be brought to a fresh understanding of what is at stake when we discuss notions such as 'elitism, ' 'democratic taste, ' and the political and economic implications of art."--Richard Crawford, author of The American Musical Landscape "We all know we are indebted to royal patronage for the music of Mozart. But who launched American talent? The answer is women, this book teaches us. Music lovers will be grateful for these ten essays, sound in scholarship, that make a strong case for the women philanthropists who ought to join Carnegie and Rockefeller as household words as sponsors of music."--Karen J. Blair, author of The Torchbearers: Women and Their Amateur Arts Associations in America

The American State Normal School is the first comprehensive history of the state normal schools in the United States. Although nearly two-hundred state colleges and regional universities throughout the U.S. began as 'normal' schools, the institutions themselves have buried their history, and scholars have largely overlooked them. As these institutions later became state colleges and/or regional universities, they distanced themselves from the low status of elementary-literally erasing physical evidence of their normal-school past. In doing so, they buried the rich history of generations of students for whom attending normal school was an enriching, and sometimes life-changing experience. Focusing on these students, the first wave of 'non-traditional' students in higher education, The American State Normal School is a much-needed re-examination of the state normal school.This book was subject of an annual History of Education Society panel for best new books in the field.