About

Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor at Mississippi State University. His first book, Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (The University of North Carolina Press, 2024) traces the economic and symbolic connections between popular music and the U.S. military during the Cold War. This project places particular focus on the country music industry’s role in military recruitment since World War II to show how the relationship between genre and militarism helped create the sonic and political color lines of the late twentieth century. His research has received funding from several institutions, including the Rose Library at Emory University, the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, Virginia Humanities, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Rolling Stone named Cold War Country one of the “Best Music Books of 2024.”

Thompson’s other writings on race, music, and politics have appeared in the academic journals Southern Cultures, Modern American History, and American Quarterly, as well as several edited collections. He has also contributed to popular outlets including the Washington Post and Time and has appeared as a featured guest on podcasts like NPR’s On the Media and Lawfare’s Chatter. Thompson is currently working on a new book project about country music, Civil War memory, and the Lost Cause.