Lisa Scoggin

Music, Animation, and Education

Music and animation: Resources

Below is a list of some of the items that I have found useful for examining music and American animation.  Please note that this is a continually evolving list.  If you know of any items that should be added to this page, be they electronic or paper, please contact me using this link.

Websites/Blogs

Dissertations (not published)

  • Alexander, Helen. “Happy Harmonies and Disturbing Discords: Scott Bradley’s Music for MGM’s Cartoons.” Ph.D. diss. University of Glasgow, 2015.
  • Batchelder, Daniel. “American Magic: Song, Animation, and Drama in Disney’s Golden Age Musicals (1928-1942).” Ph.D. diss. Case Western Reserve University, 2018.
  • Mesker, Alex. “The Limited Soundtrack: The Sound and Music of Hanna-Barbera from 1957-1973.” Ph.D. diss. Macquarie University, 2017.

Books/Articles

  • The 50 Greatest Cartoons as Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. Ed. Jerry Beck. Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994.
  • The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes. Ed. Jerry Beck. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2010.
  • Abraham, Adam. When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012.
  • Adamson, Joe. Tex Avery: King of Cartoons. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975.
  • Barrier, Michael.  Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Beck, Jerry.  The Animated Movie Guide. Chicago: A Capella Books, 2005.
  • Bendazzi, Giannalberto. Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994.
  • Bohn, James. Music in Disney’s Animated Features: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Jungle Book. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017.
  • Bukatman, Scott. The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012.
  • Bunch, Ryan. “‘Love Is an Open Door’: Repeating and Revising Disney’s Musical Tropes in Frozen.” In Contemporary Musical Film, ed. Beth Carroll and Kevin Donnelly. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2017.
  • Burke, Timothy, and Kevin Burke. Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up with Cartoon Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999.
  • The Cartoon Music Book. Ed. Daniel Goldmark and Yuval Taylor. Chicago: A Capella Books, 2002.
  • Chuck Jones Conversations. Ed. Maureen Furniss. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
  • Culhane, John. Walt Disney’s Fantasia. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983.
  • Culhane, Shamus. Animation: From Script to Screen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
  • Culhane, Seamus. Talking Animals and Other People. New York: Da Capo Press, 1986.
  • Drawn to Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity. Ed. Rebecca Coyle. London and Oakville: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010.
  • Erickson, Hal. Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949-2003, vol. 1-2. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2005.
  • Feltmate, David. Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park & Family Guy. New York: New York University Press, 2017.
  • Fleischer, Richard. Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2005.
  • From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. Ed. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.
  • Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood. Ed. Daniel Goldmark and Charlie Keil.  Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.
  • Furniss, Maureen. A New History of Animation. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2016.
  • Goldmark, Daniel.  “Before Willie: Reconsidering Music and the Animated Cartoon of the 1920s.” In Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema. Ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007.
  • Goldmark, Daniel. “Drawing a New Narrative for Cartoon Music.” In The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies, ed. David Neumeyer. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Goldmark, Daniel. Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
  • Hollis, Tim and Greg Ehrbar. Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006.
  • The Hollywood Film Music Reader. Ed. Mervyn Cooke. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
  • The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music. Ed. Lisa Scoggin and Dana Plank. New York and London: Routledge, 2023.
  • Jones, Chuck.  Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1989.
  • Kemper, Tom. Toy Story: A Critical Reading. London: BFI Palgrave, 2015.
  • Klein, Norman M. 7 Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Cartoon. New York and London: Verso, 1993.
  • Lehman, Christopher P. The Colored Cartoon: Black Presentation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
  • Maltin, Leonard.  Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York, London, Toronto, Auckland, and Victoria, Australia: Plume, 1987.
  • Merritt, Russell, and J.B. Kaufman. Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series. Glendale, CA: Disney Enterprises, 2016.
  • Music in Television: Channels of Listening. Ed. James Deaville.  Routledge Music and Screen Media Series.  New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011.
  • The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Ed. John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  • Pallant, Chris. Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2011.
  • Pointer, Pay. The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer, American Animation Pioneer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2017.
  • Prendergast, Roy M. Film Music: A Neglected Art. 2nd ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.
  • Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture. Ed. Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
  • A Reader in Animation Studies. Ed. Jayne Pilling. Sydney, Australia: John Libbey, 1997.
  • Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Brothers Animation. Ed. Kevin J. Sandler. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
  • Sammond, Nicholas. Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015.
  • Scoggin, Lisa. “Grief, Myth, and Music in Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea.” Animation Studies 15 (2020). (online)
  • Scoggin, Lisa. “Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, ed. James Deaville, Siu-Lan Tan, and Rod Rodman. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
  • Scoggin, Lisa.  The Music of Animaniacs: Postmodern Nostalgia in a Cartoon World.  Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2016.
  • Simensky, Linda. “The Revival of the Studio-Era Cartoon in the 1990s.” In Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood, ed. Daniel Goldmark and Charlie Kell. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.
  • Special Issue on Music and Sound in Disney Media. American Music 39/2 (Summer 2021). (JSTOR list of contents here)
  • Sperb, Jason. Disney’s Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012.
  • Sternfeld, Frederick. “Kubik’s McBoing Score.” Film Music Notes 10/2 (Nov.-Dec. 1950), 8-16.
  • Stilwell, Robynn. “Girls’ Voices, Boys’ Stories, and Self-Determination in Animated Films Since 2012.” In Voicing the Cinema: Music and the Integrated Soundtrack, ed. James Buhler and Hannah Lewis. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
  • Summers, Sam. DreamWorks Animation: Intertextuality and Aesthetics in Shrek and Beyond. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
  • Thomas, Frank, and Ollie Johnston. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. Glendale, CA: Walt Disney Productions, 1981.
  • Ward, Annalee. Mouse Morality: The Rhetoric of Disney Animated Films. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
  • Wells, Paul. Animation and America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
  • Wells, Paul. Understanding Animation. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Documentary Videos (coming soon!)