Jazz, Motown, and the Transformation of American Culture, 1959-1975

FAIN: ES-50364-10

Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)
Gerald Early (Project Director: March 2010 to June 2012)

Funding details:
Original grant (2010) $215,175.00
Supplement (2011) $10,000.00

A four-week institute for twenty-five school teachers to examine two musical genres in the context of changing American culture during the third quarter of the twentieth century.

This proposed institute for the summer of 2011, "The Sock Hop and the Loft: Jazz, Motown, and the Transformation of American Culture, 1959-1975," is a more concentrated, period-defined approach to some of the themes of music, race, gender, and popular culture that were featured in our NEH institutes on jazz and American culture in 2005 and 2007 and our NEH Humanities Faculty Workshop of 2008-2009, all held at Washington University in St. Louis under the aegis of the Center for the Humanities. This institute will run from Wednesday, July 6 to Friday, July 29, 2011. As with our past institutes, we will bring together thirty school teachers from various humanities disciplines including English, History, Social Studies, Art, and Music, in this instance, to explore two streams of music within the larger context of the transformation of American taste and changing ideas about the role and importance of music in society.