This course is not a survey of styles and musicians, but an introduction to theories of gender and race (in conjunction with other social categories such as class, nation, and sexuality) as lenses for studying how people have used jazz to struggle over ideas that mattered to them. Through the years, in different times and places, how and why have people played jazz, written about it, listened to it, danced to it, argued about it, policed it, marketed it, rebelled to it, survived to it? How have social and political improvisations over gender and race shaped our understandings of jazz history?
GOALS:
Through intensive reading, listening, writing, and discussions, students will gain and sharpen skills in analyzing meanings of gender and race as they circulate in jazz contexts. While focused on jazz, the skills gained in this course will be transferable to other topics in cultural studies and popular culture studies. Students will also gain historical knowledge of jazz as a participatory social, cultural, economic, and political set of sounds and practices, including little-known histories of women jazz instrumentalists
In addition to standard requirements of attendance, completing assigned readings on time, and participating in discussions, each student will be required to complete the following assignments:
(1) Five short papers on the readings. Each student is responsible for the timely completion of five short (3-5 pages) papers engaging readings, lectures, films, listening, and discussions from class. Topics will be posted on the course Blackboard site one week prior to their due date. Papers must be submitted electronically on Blackboard by the posted due date/time. (10 points each; 50% of grade).
(2) Weekly listening journal. Each student is required to listen to jazz each week, and to keep an on-line journal on Blackboard, logging at least two paragraphs per week. The entries record your observations based on your listening experiences. Some things you may wish to include in your observations are: descriptions of what you hear, what parts of the sound strike you as interesting? What does your mind do while you are listening? What does the music makes you think about? Can you connect what you hear with something from our readings, films, discussions, and lectures? Each weekly listening journal should record your observations of (1) at least one selection from the streaming audio examples linked to the Blackboard syllabus for that week; and (2) at least one example of your choice—the criteria for the latter is that it must either be marketed as jazz or it must "sound like" jazz to you (whatever that means—tell me why). You might take this selection from your own collection, from the library, or you may write about music that you hear in movie soundtracks, TV commercials, elevators, radios, concerts, restaurants, etc. What kinds of social meanings do various forms of jazz carry today? What kinds of associations have we, as particularly located subjects, been socialized to link to jazz? Write weekly entries in your journal throughout the semester. These are not graded, but at least ten weeks’ worth of entries must be submitted in order to receive full credit for this assignment. (20% of grade).
(3) Wiki assignment. Each student will produce a wiki that presents an analysis of a struggle (broadly defined) over jazz meaning that is missing from this syllabus. This may be either an individual or group project. Your wiki may explore a performance venue, a movie, a museum, a concert, a music policy in a store or restaurant, a field trip, a historical topic, a genre, a text (such as a film or novel that uses jazz)—the field is wide open. But what is required is that you locate and present evidence for a struggle over social meaning in which jazz (broadly defined) plays a significant role. INSTRUCTIONS FOR WIKI-MAKING WILL BE PROVIDED AND EASY TO FOLLOW. WIKIS MUST BE LAUNCHED NO LATER THAN NOVEMBER 14, 2007. (20% of grade)
(4) Class participation will count for the remaining 10% of the grade.
GRADUATE STUDENTS: In addition to the above, I will ask you for a longer paper (15-20 pages), and you will be assigned a critical scholarly article to summarize for the class (10 minutes maximum; present the main argument, key points, and offer a brief response to help stimulate discussion). See me to sign up for an article.
Technology: This course will rely heavily on Blackboard. The listening examples and weekly topics will be posted on the on-line syllabus, as will many of the readings.
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (Palgrave, 2002)
Lewis Erenberg, Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
Alecia P. Long, The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans (Louisiana State University Press, 2005)
Kathy Ogren, The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (University of California Press, 2002)
Additional articles
Electronic Reserve readings can be accessed via the Blackboard on-line syllabus by all registered course participants.
The staff of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), 135 Strong, 785-864-2620 (v/tty), coordinates accommodations and services for KU courses. If you have a disability for which you may request accommodation in KU classes and have not contacted them, please do as soon as possible. Please also see me privately in regard to this course.
Aug. 22
Introduction to course, key concepts, and course participants. How do we study jazz, or any musical practice, as a site of historically situated competing social and political ideas that matter to people beyond the bandstand? What tools will we be learning and using in this class as we study struggles over gender and race in jazz settings? How will these tools be useful beyond this course?
Aug 29
“Jazz History” as Site of Struggle: Lecture/Discussion: Even the ways in which people have written jazz history books have been sites of struggle over meanings about gender and race (among other things. What can we learn about struggles over gender, race, and jazz from the ways in which jazz history is told?
Film: Excerpts from Ken Burns’ Jazz
Required Reading (articles available on Blackboard):Scott Deveaux, Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 25, No. 3, Literature of Jazz Issue. (Autumn, 1991), 525-560.
Lawrence Levine, "Jazz and American Culture," The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102, No. 403 (Jan.-Mar. 1989), 6-22.
Guthrie Ramsey, “Cosmopolitan or Provincial?: Ideology in Early Black Music Historiography, 1867-1940," Black Music Research Journal 16(1), Spring 1996, 11-42.
Susan Cavin, "Missing Women: On the Voodoo Trail to Jazz," Journal of Jazz Studies vol. 3, no. 1, Fall 1975, 4-27.
Listening examples:
A brief, but not atypical, playlist for what DeVeaux calls “Jazz Tradition” will be posted on Blackboard.
Sept. 5
NO CLASS—BUT THERE IS AN ASSIGNMENT
First Short Paper due 4:00 pm today. Topic available on Blackboard under “Assignments” beginning August 29, 7:00 pm.
Jazz Historiography, Narrative, Stakes, continued: What are the alternatives to the “Jazz Tradition” narrative? For whom have these been important? Why?
Required Reading
Book:
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? Read the introduction and Chapter One, “A Marvel of Paradox” (pp. 1-53)
(article available on Blackboard):
"Don’t Know Much about History: Historiography and Popular Music Studies: Transcript of the IASPM/US 1997 Plenary Session," Journal of Popular Music Studies vol. 8, 1996, 57-89.
Elsa Barkeley Brown, "Polyrhythms and Improvisation: Lessons for Women's History," History Workshop Journal (1991), 85-90.
Listening Assignment:“Marvels of Paradox”: a less typical playlist will be posted on Blackboard to help us think about other ways jazz history might be heard.
Sept. 12
Grappling with Minstrelsy: Gender, Race, and Jazz: How do jazz musicians, fans, historians, critics, producers, etc., grapple with the closely entertwined histories of jazz and minstrelsy? How does this historical relationship inform struggles over gender and race?
Film: Marlon Riggs, Ethnic Notions (58 minutes)
Required Readings
(articles available on Blackboard):
Michelle Wallace, "Uncle Tom's Cabin: Before and After the Jim Crow Era," TDR vol. 44, no. 1, Spring 2000, 136-156
Eric Lott Eric Lott, "Love and Theft: The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy," Representations 39, (Summer 1992), 23-50.
Recommended Readings (required for Graduate Students)
Pamela Brown Lavitt, “First of the Red Hot Mamas: ‘Coon Shouting’ and the Jewish Ziegfeld Girl, American Jewish History 87 (1999), no 4, 253-90
Michael Rogin, "Black Face, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice," Critical Inquiry vol. 18, no. 3, Spring 1992, 417-453
Laurie Stras, “White Face, Black Voice: Race, Gender, and Region in the Music of the Boswell Sisters,” Journal of the Society for American Music vol. 1, issue 2, (2007), 207-255
Listening/viewing examples: 1930s examples of legacy of minstrelsy available on Blackboard.
Sept. 19
Gender, Race, and Early New Orleans Jazz: How might we use an intersectional analysis to re-examine the "birthplace" of jazz? We will attempt to find ways to narrate early jazz history that account for "many voices talking at once."
Films: Maia Harris, The Naked Dance (60 minutes); excerpts, Ken Burns’ Jazz
Required ReadingBook:
Alecia P. Long, A Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in new Orleans, 1865-1920 (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), chapters 1-3
Recommended Reading (Required for Graduate Students):
Alecia P. Long, The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920 (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), CHAPTERS FOUR AND FIVE.
Laurie Stras, "White Face, Black Voice: Race, Gender, and Region in the Music of the Boswell Sisters," Journal of the Society for American Music vol. 1, issue 2, (2007), 207-255.
Listening Assignments;
Selections from early New Orleans jazz posted on Blackboard.
Sept. 26
Gender, Race, and Jazz in the "Jazz Age": This week, we will explore the proliferation of meanings jazz in the 1920s held for African American and white writers and audiences. What musics were called "jazz" in the 1920s and who listened to them? How did the term "jazz" simultaneously come to signify the music played by King Oliver and the life-style of affluent white characters in novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Why were people so adamantly “for” or “against” jazz? What meanings did jazz express for African American and white fans and detractors of 1920s new music? Why were most African American writers, artists, and composers of the Harlem Renaissance (with the exception of Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes) more interested in emerging classical forms of African American music than they were in jazz? How can a study of multiple jazz meanings increase our understanding of gender and race in 1920s America?
Required Reading (book):
Kathy Ogren, The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Listening Assignment:
Musical examples from the 1920s posted on Blackboard.
Assignment Due
Paper #2 is due electronically at Noon.
Oct. 3
Forging and Crossing the "Essentialist Color Line" in the "Swing Era" This week we move into a new unit where we will explore struggles over "swing" as a genre, as an "era," as a musical element, as a dance music, as a popular music, a symbol of nation, and a site of struggle over ideas about "democracy." We begin with Brenda Dixon Gottschild's study of "invisibilization" of African Americans in Swing Era memory.
Film: excerpts: Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937) and Oscar Micheaux's Swing (1938)
Required Reading:
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (St. Martin's Press, 2000)
Listening Assignment:
Selection of swing examples posted on Blackboard.
Oct. 10
Swing Era continued...
Required Reading:
Book:
Lewis Erenberg, Swingin' the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1998), (Chapters 1-6)
Oct. 17
Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Nation in the "Late Swing Era": Unlike the patriotic tunes of World War I, the music that represented America during World War II was the big band swing that had become the dominant popular music form in the U.S. during the previous decade. We will take a look at some of the articulations of swing and nationalism, and the struggles that took place in late swing era contexts in both mainstream and marginalized swing big bands during World War II.
Film: The International Sweethearts of Rhythm (30 minutes)
Required Readings:
Article:
George Yoshida, "Of Jive Bombers and Stardusters: Dance Bands in 'Assembly' Centers and Detention Camps," from Reminiscing in Swingtime: Japanese Americans in Popular Music: 1925-1960 (San Francisco, 1997), 119-188.
Sherrie Tucker, "'And Fellas, They're American Girls!": On the Road with the Sharon Rogers All-Girl Band," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol 16, No. 2/3, Gender, Nations, Nationalisms. (1996), 128-160.
Recommended Reading:
Book:
Lewis Erenberg, Swingin' the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1998), (Chapter 7)
Listening examples:
International Sweethearts of Rhythm examples on Blackboard.
Assignment Due:
Third short paper due electronically October 17 @ Noon. You have a few more days with this one. The topic will appear in "Assignments" menu after class on Friday, October 5, at Midnight.
Oct. 24
Gendering the Jazz Wars--Swing, Bebop, New Orleans Revival
The rise of the new style "bebop" in the 1940s generated new controversies in jazz discourse. Developed during the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, and while many musicians' careers were on hold "for the duration" of the war, bebop struck many ears as radically disconnected from previous styles and meanings: as variously militant, "hip," modern, urbane, pretentious, chaotic. How did bebop's innovators, fans, and detractors perceive and contribute the music's meanings? How are these related to the war, to 1940s civil rights struggles of African Americans, of black soldiers' war experiences, of labor booms, mass rural to urban relocations of thousands of Americans, and uprisings, based on racism and rebellions against racism, in U.S. cities, including the “zoot suit riots” in Los Angeles?Film: New Orleans (1947) part one.
Required Readings:
Book Chapter:
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? Chapter Two, "Dizzy Atmosphere," (54-100).
Recommended Readings (Required for Graduate Students):
Article:
Bernard Gendron, "Moldy Figs and Modernists: Jazz at War (1942-1946),”from Krin Gabbard, ed., Jazz Among the Discourses (Durham: Duke, 1995).
Required Listening:
Examples of bebop, swing, “trad.” What were the critics fighting about?
Assignments Due:
Listening Journal #3
October 31
Post-War Jazz: Gender, Race, and Hipness: What is hipness? Why are we studying it in this class? Did postwar women have access to "hipness"?
Film: New Orleans (1947) continued... (is anyone in this film hip?)
Required Readings:
Book Chapter:
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? Chapter Three, "'Passions of a Man': The Poetics and Politics of Charles Mingus," (101-148).
Articles:
Ingrid Monson, "The Problem With White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse," Journal of the American Musicological Society XLVIII(3) (Fall 1995), 396-422
Norman Mailer, “The White Negro,” (originally published 1957)
James Baldwin, "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy," from Nobody Knows My Name (1961).
Listening examples:
All of this week's examples were recorded in 1959? Which ones to you think were heard as "hip"? Why? What might race and gender have to do with this?
Nov. 7
Gender, Race, and Jazz in Black Liberation Struggles: Jazz discourse of the 1950s and 1960s is a place where we can explore a multiplicity of radically changing meanings of race and gender in a variety of jazz contexts, including the Civil Rights Movement, Black Arts Movement, and Cold War. How did production and consumption of jazz in the 1960s reflect and contribute to ideological and material struggles about race relations and how were these gendered?
Required Readings
Book Chapter:
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? Chapter Four, "'Straight Ahead': Abbey Lincoln and the Challenge of Jazz Singing" (149-190).
Excerpts (on Blackboard):
Selections from Art Taylor, Notes and Tones: Musician-to Musician Interviews (Da Capo 1993 [originally published 1977]).
Nanette de Jong, "Women of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians: Four Narratives," in ed. Eileen M. Hayes and Linda F. Williams, Black Women and Music: More than the Blues (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 134-152.
Listening Assignment:
1960s examples on Blackboard.
Nov. 14
Black Nationalism, Internationalism, and Beyond How has jazz functioned in the context of African American and Pan-African cultural politics? What role did jazz collectives play in Black Power and other African American political and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, from community grass-roots organizing to nation-based models, to international struggles such as Third World Liberation? How were issues of gender attended to in these jazz collectives? What are the overlaps and differences among African American political and musical organizations of this time? Can free jazz exist in an unfree world?
Required Readings:
Book Chapter
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? Chapter Five, "Practicing Creative Music," (191-239).
Chapters/Articles (on Blackboard):
Robin D.G. Kelley, "Dreams of the New Land," from Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 13-35.Valerie Wilmer, Chapter 7, "The AACM--Chicago's Alternative Society," and Chapter 12, "You Sound Good--for a Woman," from As Serious As Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz (112-126, 204-210).
Recommended Reading (Required of Graduate Students):
Book Chapter:
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? Chapter Six, "Writing Creative Music," (240-286).
Listening Assignment:
Examples from avant garde collectives, 1960s-1990s
Assignment Due:
Short paper #4 is due electronically at midnight,
Nov. 21: NO CLASS MEETING, THANKSGIVING BREAK
Nov. 28
Wikis go public (to our class only) at 4:00 pm on November 28.
Barring technical difficulties, we will look at the Wikis in class. If any group has technical reasons for needing an extra week, let me know, but I'm hoping that most, if not all, will be ready for viewing on November 28. Each group has 10-15 minutes to present their Wiki.
Dec. 5
Jumping Ahead to Continuing Debates: Gender, Race, and Jazz in the Wikis: What is the contemporary relevance of what we have studied in this class? What themes, issues, questions, theories, sounds, and/or images that we have studied in AMS 650 this semester continue to circulate in some form or another in the present moment? How might Jazz Studies inform our analysis of contemporary culture?
Required Readings:
Visit all group Wikis and be prepared to discuss them.
Lara Pellegrinelli, "Dig, Boy, Dig," Village Voice, Nov. 8-14, 2000.
Michael Langello, "No One Sets Out to Be A Smooth Jazz Musician," The Onion, July 25, 2007.
Linda Williams, Black Women, Jazz, and Feminism, from Eileen Hayes and Linda F. Williams, ed., Black Women and Music: More Than the Blues (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 119-133.
Carl Hancock Rux, "Eminem: The New White Negro" from Greg Tate, ed., Everything But the Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture (New York: Harlem Moon, 2003), 15-38.
Recommended Readings (Required of Graduate Students):
Herman Gray, "Jazz Tradition, Institutional Formation, and Cultural Practice: The Canon and the Street as Frameworks for Oppositional Black Cultural Practices," from Elizabeth Long, ed., From Sociology to Cultural Studies: New Perspectives (Blackwell Books, 1997), 351-373.
