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Songwriting As Inquiry And Action: Emotion, Narrative Identity, And Authenticity In Folk Music Culture, Maggie Colleen Cobb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation can broadly be summarized as an examination of the construction and maintenance of a specific type of “authentic” American identity through the lens of folk music. Drawing from interpretive perspectives within the sociology of culture and social psychology, social constructionism and symbolic interactionism in particular, I combine ethnographic research with 61 interviews at two different “folk musicians’ festivals” (festivals where attendees, not hired professionals, produce the music).

My principal focus at these festivals concerns the various practices and stories surrounding the creation and performance of original folk music. I use the empirical platform of musicians’ festivals, where folk …