Teaching Jazz as American Culture

FAIN: ES-50152-06

Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)
Gerald Early (Project Director: March 2006 to September 2008)

A four-week institute for thirty school teachers on the history of jazz in American culture and society.

This proposed institute for the summer of 2007, “Teaching Jazz as American Culture,” a repeat version of the institute funded by the NEH in 2005 with new features, will bring together 30 high school teachers from various humanities disciplines including English, History, Social Studies, Art, and Music, to explore the cultural dimensions of jazz as a phenomenon in American social, political, commercial, and artistic life. In addition, the institute will look at the impact of jazz abroad by examining accounts of American jazz musicians who toured in other countries and in looking at the impact of jazz in two particular countries, the Republic of Georgia and Japan.