Conference Schedule

THURSDAY, APRIL 12

All sessions will be held in the Roosevelt Room, Mugar Memorial Library

1:30 pm Registration Opens (Outside the Roosevelt Room)

1:45 pm Introduction and Welcome: Jeremy Yudkin (Boston University)

2:00 pm SESSION 1

1) “Simple and Sweet: Reassessing the Role of Artie Shaw’s Gramercy Five in Modern Jazz Scholarship”

Alexandre Abdoulaev (Boston University)

2) “The Birthing of the ‘Cool’: Jazz Criticism and Historiography”

Eunmi Shim (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

3:30 pm Tea Break (Outside the Roosevelt Room)

4:00 pm KEYNOTE LECTURE

“Jazz and ‘Politics,’ in the Broader Sense”

Lewis Porter (Rutgers University)

4:45 pm Discussion

5:15 pm Break for dinner

8:00 pm Concert (Tsai Performance Center)

All sessions will be held in the Roosevelt Room, Mugar Memorial Library

8:30 am Continental Breakfast (Outside the Roosevelt Room)

9:00 am SESSION 2

1) “Musical Phrasing in Billie Holiday’s Recordings of ‘Strange Fruit’”

Kelsey Klotz (Washington University in St. Louis)

2) “Song for a Dark Lady: Billie Holiday and the Performance of ‘Strange Fruit’”

Sarah Perkins (Stanford University)

3) “Whose Song is It, Anyway? Reconciling ‘Strange Fruit,’ Abel Meeropol, and Billie Holiday”

Maya C. Gibson (University of Missouri-Columbia)

11:15 am Coffee break (outside of the Roosevelt Room)

11:30 am SESSION 3

1) “Doing Jazz, Criticism, and American Politics”

Mark Harvey (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

2) “’Just Who Do You Think I Am?’: The Politics of Categorizing Nina Simone’s Protest Music”

Heather Buffington Anderson (University of Texas at Austin)

1:00 pm Break for Lunch

2:30 pm SESSION 4

1) “Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allan): Political Commentator and Social Conscience”

Nancy Kovaleff Baker (Boston University)

2) “Ella Fitzgerald and the Critics in the African American Press, ca. 1936-1950”

Judith Tick (Northeastern University)

4:00 pm Closing remarks – Jeremy Yudkin (Boston University)