The American musical, though one of the United States' most popular and emblematic musical genres, has long been neglected as a topic for academic study. Only recently have scholars taken up the serious study of musicals, and serious criticism and commentary available to non-professionals is still sparse. The Oxford Handbook of the Amreican Musical is designed to be used by students in all disciplines concerned with the genre, as well as non-academic listeners who want to enrich their experience...

• Introduction (Stacy Wolf)
• I Historiography
• 1 Narratives and Values: Stories of the Musical (Mitchell Morris)
• 2 Texts and Authors (Jim Lovensheimer)
• 3 Marian Waltzes while Harold Marches: Musical Styles and Types in the American Musical (Paul Laird)
• 4 Evolution of Dance in the Golden Age of the American "Book Musical" (Liza Gennaro)
• II Transformations
• 5 Minstrelsy and Theatrical Miscegenation (Thomas L Riis)
• 6 Toward the First "Golden Age": Tin Pan Alley Songs on Stage a...