Jazz and Gender
Over the last two decades, such feminist scholars of jazz as Sherrie Tucker and Nichole T. Rustin have challenged traditional methodological approaches to jazz by pointing to the significance of gender studies for jazz research. At the same time, female instrumentalists and composers like Carla Bley, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Esperanza Spalding, among others, have become quite prominent as jazz artists, at least within the jazz scene. Recalling the music’s highly contested history of gender relations, however, jazz cultures still tend to be dominated by male musicians and masculinist aesthetics.
This course investigates aspects of gender in jazz and its discourses during the 20th and 21st century. It explores the ways in which jazz musicians have negotiated and responded to racialized and gendered notions of their music. In addition, this course investigates how a gender and cultural studies approach to jazz history can be adapted to the music classroom.
Please purchase the following book before the beginning of the semester: Walser, Robert: Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.