ABSTRACT
Teaching American music is serious fun and caused to rethink both teaching and scholarship. Students of American history or in American studies programs have often been introduced to sophisticated modes of analytic thought and critical interpretation, methodologies often foreign to the music major. The American Musicological Society continues to belie its name as scholarship on American music-making remains underrepresented at national conferences and within the pages of its journal. Graduate students who pursue Americanist topics often find they must do double-duty preparing for comprehensive and preliminary examinations, learning repertory and scholarship for both Western Europe and North America. The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) does not require American music courses for institutional accreditation. A course in American music presents a historiographic challenge through the perspective of place over chronological period. A regional locus demands exploring the "regionalist", examining how certain parts of a landscape or nation acquire more worth and prestige.
