Concepts We'll Ponder: Identity, Improvisation, and Community in the Phish Experience

Author:   Stephanie C. Jenkins ,  Natalie J. Dollar ,  Dana Reason
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:  

9781666955187


Pages:   408
Publication Date:   22 January 2026
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Concepts We'll Ponder: Identity, Improvisation, and Community in the Phish Experience


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Full Product Details

Author:   Stephanie C. Jenkins ,  Natalie J. Dollar ,  Dana Reason
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Rowman & Littlefield
Dimensions:   Width: 16.00cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.720kg
ISBN:  

9781666955187


ISBN 10:   1666955183
Pages:   408
Publication Date:   22 January 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Forward by Benjy Eisen Acknowledgments Editors’ Introduction Stephanie Jenkins How I’m Forced To Learn: Methodologies Chapter 1: We Are Aphicionados! We Are Vernacular Theorists! A Critical Reconsideration and Anti-Hegemonic Recasting of Phish, Phandon, and Fan Praxis Jnan Blau Chapter 2: Read The Book: Experiencing Philosophy in the Classroom with Phish Stephanie C. Jenkins Companions On This Ride: Phish Fan Community and Identity Chapter 3: I Strive to Convey What You Strive to Condone’: Phish Scene Identity and Understanding America Elizabeth A. Yeager Chapter 4: A Cultural Rhetorical Model of Identity for Dispersed Communities: Case of Jam Band Communities Natalie J. Dollar, Nicholas Dahl, & Alexa Tawzer Chapter 5: Donuts, Dresses and Phish: The Effects of Trademark Law on the Production of Culture Inside and Outside of the Phish Scene Daniel W. Dylan Chapter 6: Phish Fan’s Performance of Resistance, Recuperation, and Reiteration Christina L. Allaback We’re All in This Together: Gender and Accessibility in the Phish Community Chapter 7: Inside this Silent Scene, All Are Free: An Assessment of Accessibility Issues Facing Deaf/Hard of Hearing (HoH) Fans at Phish Concerts Joel Gershon Chapter 8: You Were the Song That My Soul Understood: Personal Connections Through Shared Discourse in Facebook Community, Phish Chicks Denise Goldman Healing The Symptoms Chapter 9: From the Concert to the Couch: Phish and the Therapeutic Alliance Isaac Slone Chapter 10: Community Through the Phellowship: A Support Group of Phans who Choose to Remain Sober John Boatner Shiny Music That Descends From Overhead: The Significance of Musical Structure and Improvisation Chapter 11: On the Persistence of the Groove: Structural Fog and Jouissance in a ‘Split Open and Melt’ Jam Stephen Reale Chapter 12: ’Up the Mountain’: The Compositional Use of the Arpeggiated Augmented Triad in Anastasio’s ‘Colonel Forbin’s Ascent’ Julie Viscardi-Smalley Chapter 13: The Camden ‘Chalk Dust Torture’ as a Model for Understanding Improvisational Aesthetics Jacob A. Cohen Chapter 14: An Ethnographic & Feminist Listen-In: Riffing on Phish Through the Influences of Improvised Music Histories and Collective Practices Dana Reason Do You Have to Count Them?: Setlists and Ratings Chapter 15: A Graph-Theoretic Approach to Setlist Structure Analysis Matthew Sottile Chapter 16: “Waiting, Calculating:” Phish Setlists and Fans’ Show Ratings Paul Jakus

Reviews

""Born out of the first-ever Phish Studies Conference, this landmark volume showcases the extraordinary range of scholarship exploring the Phish phenomenon. With essays that are as innovative as they are insightful, the book demonstrates how the band, their music, and the fan community inspire both rigorous academic inquiry and joyful curiosity. Multidisciplinary and vast in scope, this collection makes a serious scholarly contribution to the burgeoning field of Phish Studies, deepening our appreciation of a cultural movement that is both widely misunderstood and profoundly significant in American life."" * Oren Kroll-Zeldin, University of San Francisco * ""This is a richly written and curated opportunity for academics of any flavor to learn a bit about the distinctive history behind and deep fandom surrounding one of the most successful and iconoclastic musical performance groups of the last four decades. By the same stroke, it is a chance for Phish fans to learn something (as I did) about the interests and perspectives of more than a dozen academic disciplines. The book, like the band, brings together (and sometimes blends) approaches that rarely share a stage but, once synergized and synthesized, produce something far bigger and bolder than the separate components ever could."" * Ellis Godard, California State University, Northridge *


""Born out of the first-ever Phish Studies Conference, this landmark volume showcases the extraordinary range of scholarship exploring the Phish phenomenon. With essays that are as innovative as they are insightful, the book demonstrates how the band, their music, and the fan community inspire both rigorous academic inquiry and joyful curiosity. Multidisciplinary and vast in scope, this collection makes a serious scholarly contribution to the burgeoning field of Phish Studies, deepening our appreciation of a cultural movement that is both widely misunderstood and profoundly significant in American life."" * Oren Kroll-Zeldin, University of San Francisco * ""This is a richly written and curated opportunity for academics of any flavor to learn a bit about the distinctive history behind and deep fandom surrounding one of the most successful and iconoclastic musical performance groups of the last four decades. By the same stroke, it is a chance for Phish fans to learn something (as I did) about the interests and perspectives of more than a dozen academic disciplines. The book, like the band, brings together (and sometimes blends) approaches that rarely share a stage but, once synergized and synthesized, produce something far bigger and bolder than the separate components ever could."" * Ellis Godard, California State University, Northridge * “Concepts We’ll Ponder is a thoughtfully structured, masterfully edited, and widely relevant volume that provides a cornerstone for the burgeoning field of Phish Studies, while also contributing great value regardless of the reader being a Phish fan. The breadth of disciplines included in this volume, combined with the rigorous quality of the scholarship and depth of application within those disciplines, allows the impact and relevance to reach far beyond the Phish fan community. Concepts We’ll Ponder makes deeply valuable contribution to our understanding of the significant role that music can make to the people and communities that surround it. Read the Book!” * Devan Rosen, Ithaca College *


Author Information

Stephanie Jenkins is Associate Professor at Oregon State University. Natalie Dollar is Associate Professor at Oregon State University. Dana Reason is Associate Professor at Oregon State University.

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