Stories of Music, Luxury, and Loss in the Age of Revolutions

FAIN: FT-291443-23

Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden
University of North Texas (Denton, TX 76203-5017)

Research leading to a book about music in the lives of elite women and their households along trade routes from the East and West Indies, 1760s-1820s.

This book shows the role of music in women's experiences of colliding consumer and political revolutions from the 1760s to 1820s. Drawing on a material culture framework, it disproves contemporaneous texts that described women's musical practices and possessions as superfluous. Instead, each chapter provides an intimate portrait of elite women, their loved ones, and subordinates, to reveal the ways in which women along trade routes from the East and West Indies used music to relate physically and affectively to one another and to navigate their rapidly changing world.