Felicia Barber, Ph.D., associate professor of music and the University’s director of choral activities, has authored A New Perspective for the Use of Dialect in African American Spirituals: History, Context, and Linguistics.
Her work investigates the use of the African American English (AAE) dialect in the musical genre of the spiritual, tracing the history of the dialect, its use in early performance practice, and the sociolinguistic impact of the AAE dialect in the United States.
The publication will soon be released by Roman & Littlefield.