This dissertation presents a social history and ethnography of "God Bless America," from its composition by Irving Berlin in 1918 and 1938 radio premiere by Kate Smith, to its sudden popularity after the September 11th attacks, to its uses in a post-post-9/11 world. Tracing the song's history illuminates three interconnected stories about mainstream American culture. First, the song's performance history reflects the transformation of popular music production and consumption, from the golden age of radio to the Internet age. Second, changes in the song's reception and uses over time connect to larger social and political shifts within the United States during this period. Finally, the song's use as an alternate anthem reveals the underlying role of secular communal singing in both forging and contesting community ties within American public life.

The introduction provides context for the study and introduces a new framework for understanding the functions of secular communal singing. Chapter one examines the twin functions of commemoration and coercion in the song's post-9/11 popularity, beginning with an ethnographic study of the spontaneous Congressional performance on the steps of the Capitol, which anointed the song as a vehicle for public mourning. Chapter two returns to the song's origins to examine its creation and first performances, illuminating the underlying tensions between composer and performer in American popular music, and showing how lyrical changes to the song reflected ideological shifts from isolationism to interventionism in the late 1930s. Chapter three highlights the song's early reception, exploring how its embrace reflected the anxiety of the period just before the United States entered World War II, and revealing an anti-Semitic and xenophobic backlash against it. Chapter four examines the shifting meanings in the uses of the song over time, drawing on newspaper research to trace a rightward ideological trajectory, from early associations with religious and ethnic tolerance to increasing uses as an anthem for the Christian Right. Chapter five provides an ethnographic portrait of the song's post-9/11 role within the ritualized pageantry of professional baseball, which serves as an ideal research site to observe the functions of communal singing in contemporary American public life.