Jazz and American Culture

Introduction: A brief history of jazz in American culture by Michael Borshuk. Part I. Elements of sound and style: 1. Improvisation by Ajay Heble, 2. Scat and vocalese by Chris Tonelli, 3. Jazz as intertextual expression by Charles Hersch, 4. How to watch jazz: The importance of performance by Michael Borshuk. Part II. Aesthetic movements: 5. Jazz age Harlem by Fiona Ngo, 6. 'Hard times don't worry me': The blues in Black music and literature in the 1930s by Steven Tracy, 7. A fool for beauty: Modernism and the racial semiotics of crooning by Michael Coyle, 8. Free jazz, critical performativity, and 1968 by Michael Hrebeniak. Part III. Cultural contexts: 9. Jazz slang, jazz speak by Amor Kohli, 10. Jazz cool by Joel Dinerstein, 11. The institutionalisation of jazz by Dale Chapman, 12. Jazz abroad by Jurgen Grandt. Part IV. Literary genres: 13. Orchestrating chaos: Othering and the politics of contingency in jazz fiction by Herman Beavers, 14. 'Wail, wop': Jazz poetry on the page and in performance by Jessica Teague, 15. Jazz criticism and liner notes by Timothy Gray, 16. Jazz autobiography by Daniel Stein, 17. Jazz and the American songbook by Katherine Williams. Part V. Images and screens: 18. 'The sound I saw': Jazz and visual culture by Amy Abugo Ongiri, 19. Love, theft, and transcendence: Jazz and narrative cinema by Krin Gabbard, 20. Reinstating televisual histories of jazz by Nicolas Pillai, 21. Documentary jazz/jazz documentary by Will Finch, 22. Two dark rooms: Jazz and photography by Benjamin Cawthra.