Publications

Editions

Original Sacred Harp: Centennial Edition (Pitts Theology Library and Sacred Harp Publishing Company, 2015).
Original Sacred Harp: Centennial Edition.

Joseph Stephen James, ed., Original Sacred Harp: Centennial Edition, Centennial Edition ed., Jesse P. Karlsberg (Atlanta, GA: Pitts Theology Library; Carrollton, GA: Sacred Harp Publishing Company, 2015 [1911]).

Media coverage:

Joseph Stephen James and Seaborn McDaniel Denson, eds., Sacred Tunes and Hymns (1913): A Scholarly Edition, scholarly edition ed., Jesse P. Karlsberg (under contract with University of North Carolina Press).

Book

Fasola Americans: Race, Place, and Sacred Harp Singing (manuscript in preparation).

Dissertation

Folklore’s Filter: Race, Place, and Sacred Harp Singing” (Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, 2015), https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/n009w256n.

Awards:

Media coverage:

Refereed Journal Articles

“Selectively Staging the ‘Beloved Community’: Sacred Harp Singing and Racial Politics in the Folk Revival.” In Oxford Handbook of Community Singing, edited by Esther Morgan-Ellis and Kay Norton. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, expected 2024 (in press).

Spiritual Concert-Fundraisers, Singing Conventions, and Cherokee Language Learning Academies: Vernacular Southern Hymnbooks in Noncongregational Settings.” Yale Journal of Music and Religion 9, no. 1 (2023). With Kaylina Madison Crawley and Sarah Snyder Hopkins. https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1237.

The Folk Scholarship Roots and Geopolitical Boundaries of Sacred Harp’s Global Twenty-first Century,” Country Dance + Song Online 2 (April 2019), https://cdss.org/publications/read/cds/cds-volume-2/the-folk-scholarship-roots-and-geopolitical-boundaries-of-sacred-harps-global-twenty-first-century-2/.

Genre Spanning in the Close and Dispersed Harmony Shape-Note Songs of Sidney Whitfield Denson and Orin Adolphus Parris,” American Music 35, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 94–132.

Ireland’s First Sacred Harp Convention: ‘To Meet To Part No More,’” Southern Spaces, November 30, 2011, https://doi.org/10.18737/M7089Q.

Major Edited Works

Sounding Spirit: Critical Editions from the Southern Sacred Music Diaspora, 1850–1925. Series of digital and print critical editions. Series editor-in-chief. University of North Carolina Press.

The Sacred Harp. Shape-note tunebook in print since 1844. Revision committee member, with David Ivey, Lauren Bock, Helen Brown, Richard Ivey, Nathan Rees, Karen Rollins, Terry Wootten, and David Wright. Sacred Harp Publishing Company.

Toward a Critically Engaged Digital Practice: American Studies and the Digital Humanities. Special issue of American Quarterly 70, no. 3 (2018). Co-editor, with Matthew Delmont, Amy Earhart, Susan Garfinkel, Angel David Nieves, and Lauren Tilton.

Selected Digital Humanities and Multimedia Projects

White House Soul of America Gospel Concert. White House/National Endowment for the Humanities gospel and spirituals concert, produced by TV One. Historical commentator and advisor, 2022.

Readux. Open source digital platform display, annotate, and export digitized books. Lead developer, version 1, Rebecca Koeser. Lead developers, version 2, Jay Varner with Ben Brumfield and Sara Brumfield. Product manager, version 1, Sara Palmer. Project coordinator, version 2, Joanna Mundy. Product owner, version 2, Jesse P. Karlsberg. Version 1.8, August 2017; Version 2, April 2020.

Sounding Spirit Digital Library. Digital thematic research collections of vernacular southern sacred music, 1850–1925. Project director. April 2020.

Sacred Harp Minutes: A Relational Database. Database and API collecting proceedings from 12,000+ Sacred Harp singings, 1945–present, enhanced with GIS and music information data. Project director. Forthcoming, August 2022.

‘Within Thy Circling Pow’r I Stand’: Immersive Video from Sacred Harp’s Hollow Square.” Southern Spaces (January 29, 2020). With Steve Bransford.

FaSoLa Minutes. iOS and Android application enabling users to read, search, and interpret minutes recording the proceedings of Sacred Harp singings taken from 1995–present. Programmed by Mark Godfrey and Mike Richards. Designed by Lauren Bock. Project manager, Jesse P. Karlsberg. Version 1.0, 2013; Version 2.0, 2015.

Songs of the Sacred Harp. Half-hour BBC Radio 4 documentary on Sacred Harp singing’s history and recent spread to Europe. Narrated by Cerys Matthews. Produced and edited by Joby Waldman. Main interview subject and historical advisor, Jesse P. Karlsberg. 2013.

New Compositions in the Style of The Sacred Harp. Web site featuring new tunes, written in the styles of The Sacred Harp, by composers from the United States and the United Kingdom. Programmed, designed, and edited by Jesse P. Karlsberg. 2007–2022. Redeveloped with Steve Brett, 2022.

Reports

Interinstitutional Thematic Collection Development: Technical and Procedural Considerations from the Sounding Spirit Digital Library.” White paper for the National Endowment for the Humanities, July 2020. (With Erin Fulton.)

The Digital Drawer: A Crowd-Sourced, Curated, Digital Archive Preserving History and Memory.” White paper for the National Endowment for the Humanities, November 16, 2020. (With Scott Robertson.)

Datasets

Checklist of Southern Sacred Music Imprints, 1850–1925.” Sounding Spirit Dataverse, 2020. (With Erin Fulton.)

Selected Non-Refereed Articles

Southern Spaces: A Partial History,” Southern Spaces, September 28, 2017 (with Martin Halbert, Katherine Skinner, Allen Tullos, Sarah Toton, Franky Abbott, Katie Rawson, Meredith Doster, Mary Battle, and Sarah Melton).

Raymond Cooper Hamrick: Sacred Harp Craftsman,” Georgia Music News 72, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 74–76.

Articles for the Southern Spaces Blog

Articles for the Country Dance and Song Society News

Articles for the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter

Articles for the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship Project Team Blog

Selected Shape-note Music

“Douglasville” and “Wilscot,” in Myles Louis Dakan, John W. DelRe, Leyland W. DelRe, Nora Dunn, Rachel Wells Hall, Daniel Hunter, Kelly Macklin, and Robert Stoddard, eds., The Shenandoah Harmony (Berryville, VA: Shenandoah Harmony Publishing Company, 2013), 142, 434–435.

“National Blessings,” in Johnny Lee and Karen Willard, eds., The Sacred Harp: Revised Cooper Edition (Samson, AL: Sacred Harp Book Company, 2012), 594.

“Clinton,” “Hamrick,” and “Newton,” in Larry Gordon, Anthony Barrand, and Carole Moody Compton, eds., Northern Harmony (Marshfield, VT: Northern Harmony Publishing Company, 2012),  46–47, 104, 178–179.

Tunes in The Trumpet

  • Waddell Street,” The Trumpet 4, no. 2 (December 2014): 178.
  • Anniston,” The Trumpet 3, no. 3 (November 2013): 148.
  • Farewell Brethren,” The Trumpet 3, no. 3 (November 2013): 148.
  • Akerman,” The Trumpet 3, no. 1 (February 2013): 102–103.
  • Now I Was Free,” The Trumpet 2, no. 2 (May 2012): 80–81.
  • Clinton,” The Trumpet 2, no. 1 (January 2012): 49.
  • Auburndale,” The Trumpet 1, no. 2 (June 2011): 21.

Book Reviews

Review of Burford, Mark, Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Notes 78, no. 4 (June 2022): 544–46.

Review of Cooke, Nym, American Harmony: Inspired Choral Miniatures. Boston, MA: David R. Godine, 2017. Journal of the Society for American Music 16, no. 2 (May 2022): 240–43.

Review of by Conforth, Bruce M., African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013, Society for American Music Bulletin 42, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 23–26.

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