Jazz, Criticism & American Politics

Boston University, April 12 and 13, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Lewis Porter (Rutgers University)

The Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Boston University in collaboration with the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center will host an international conference, “Jazz, Criticism, and American Politics,” on April 12 and 13, 2012. The Gotlieb Archival Research Center houses several important collections spanning the history of American jazz in the twentieth century, from bandleaders Don Ellis and Cab Calloway, songwriters Sylvia Dee, Abel Meeropol, and Johnny Mercer, singer Ella Fitzgerald, to the writings of jazz historians and critics Andre Hodeir, Winthrop Sergeant, Henry Pleasants, Nat Hentoff, and Charles Keil.

The conference will be held in the Roosevelt Room of the Mugar Memorial Library on the Boston University campus, and will feature a special concert of music from the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center on Thursday, April 12 at the Tsai Performance Center.

Both the conference and the concert are free and open to the public.

Program Committee: Steven Cornelius, Thomas Peattie, Andrew Shenton, Jeremy Yudkin.