This is part of an ongoing series of posts about the work of students in BGSU in public history. Joshua Dubbert is a graduate student in the M.A. in history. He studies 19th-century America, Victorian Culture, and the composer Stephen Foster. To learn more about our history programs, visit bgsu.edu/history.
I recently visited the Stephen Foster Memorial Museum in Pittsburgh, PA to do research for my Public History Capstone project, entitled Stephen Foster, at Home in the 19th Century. The project deals with 19th-century composer Stephen Collins Foster, author of some of the most famous songs in American history including “Oh! Susanna,” and “Camptown Races.” It will be available through an Omeka site that will be linked permanently on the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for American Music website. The central contribution of the project will be a synthesis of the conceptual and physical aspects of home relating to Foster, anchored in the early to mid-Victorian era. It will be the first study to examine Foster solely in relation to the Victorian idea of “home.”
This semester, 