The Oxford Handbook of the Disney Musical

The Oxford Handbook of the Disney Musical brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to interrogate an enduringly popular and influential cultural phenomenon. Broadening the purview of extant scholarship while also reflecting its methodological multiplicity, this collection takes an expansive approach to the Disney musical.

From animated musical shorts to Disney video games, the Handbook acknowledges that the Walt Disney Company uses the musical across a range of media and explores what that means culturally, commercially, and technologically. The chapters cover case studies from the classical (Alice in Wonderland, Bambi) and more contemporary (Aladdin, Frozen II) eras, acknowledge the importance of theme parks, television, and video games to Disney’s success, and explore cultural figures and themes. Contributors also unpack Disney’s complicated relationship with race, gender, and sexuality, and the company’s recent centennial provides an apt opportunity to reflect on the importance of the musical to the conglomerate’s evolution in diverse segments of the media industries. Taken together, the Handbook combines innovative original research, analyses of previously unexamined archival documents, case studies, topical discussions, and critiques of current knowledge and existing scholarship to give voice to new perspectives on this important topic. By including the perspectives of scholars from film, theater, television, musicology, children’s literature, and cultural studies, serving as a multidisciplinary resource.

Dominic Broomfield-McHugh is Professor in Musicology at the University of Sheffield. He has published eight books, which reflect his interest in the cultural world of the mid-twentieth-century American musical, including studies of the work of figures such as Cole Porter and Lerner and Loewe, as well as My Fair Lady and The Wizard of Oz. He is an Emmy Award winner for his role on the PBS documentary Meredith Willson: America’s Music Man, which came out of his monograph published about Willson, The Big Parade. He has acted as an advisor to productions of My Fair Lady and Paint Your Wagon in America, Australia and the U.K. and has delivered talks at leading venues including the BFI, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress (AMS lecture), and the Sydney Opera House.

Colleen Montgomery is Associate Professor in the Department of Radio, Television, & Film at Rowan University. Her research centers on animation, film sound/music, and vocal performance. She is completing a monograph on vocal performance in Disney and Pixar Animation for the University of California Press. She is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Media and Vocality with Lisa Coulthard and Katherine Spring. Her work has been published in journals including American Music, Animation Studies, The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Media Industries, and Music Sound and the Moving Image, as well as in several edited collections.