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Sounding ChildhoodMain MenuPart 1: Hymns & Religious SongsPart 2: Songs for School and PlayPart 3: Animal Welfare (Bands of Mercy) SongsPart 4: Christmas CarolsChristmas Carol choir December 2023Part 5: Folk SongsWorks CitedAbout the Author
12023-06-16T08:23:02-07:00About the Author9plain2025-08-25T20:51:55-07:00Alisa Clapp-Itnyre received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1996. She is Professor of English at Indiana University East, Richmond, Indiana where she has taught since 1999, teaching courses such as Children's Literature, Young-Adult Literature, and Victorian literature, among others. There, she helped establish the first Honors Program in 2005 and was its third Director, 2010-18.
Her scholarship explores interdisciplinary music-literature connections in Victorian culture, as well as childhood culture and children's music of the 19th century. She is author of Angelic Airs, Subversive Songs: Music as Social Discourse in the Victorian Novel (Ohio UP, 2002), British Hymn Books for Children (2016), and is co-editor, with Julie Melnyk, of "Perplext by Faith:" Essays on Victorian Beliefs and Doubts (Cambridge Scholars, 2015). She has published almost 30 articles in edited books or journals such as Victorian Poetry, Victorian Literature and Culture, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Children’s Literature and Education, and Brontë Studies.
Her current project is an exploration of children’s diaries of the Victorian and Edwardian English-speaking world, based on research of 100+ children's diaries from major archives in the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Clapp-Itnyre has directed eight plays with Richmond Civic Theatre's Stage One Youth Theatre, and run four children's-choir camps heard here. She has also served on the Board of the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County, serves on the Richmond Shakespeare Festival Board, the Wayne County Historical Museum, and on the Administrative Council of Central United Methodist Church, Richmond, IN. She has served as secretary, treasurer, and/or board member of the Midwest Victorian Studies Association for 14 years.
In 2024, she formed the Community Choristers, the first-ever children's choir of Richmond, Indiana. Over 75 children have sung in 5 choir-cycles in it since then. Their voices can be heard on this website.
