Columbia Jazz Studies

Academic Courses
in Jazz Studies at Columbia

At both undergraduate and graduate levels, the Center offers academic courses in jazz studies. In addition, graduate seminars and mixed seminars for graduate students and advanced undergraduates are offered. Courses are taught both by regular Center faculty in a variety of fields, and by Visiting Louis Armstrong Professors.

Undergraduate students may enroll in the Special Concentration in Jazz Studies, an interdisciplinary liberal arts course open to music majors as well as those majoring in other fields. This concentration guides students in developing a firm grounding in the traditions and aesthetic motives of jazz music, in dialogue with multiple perspectives and methodologies, including those drawn from historical musicology, ethnomusicology, literary theory, cultural studies, and the social sciences.

Recent Courses (2009)

Greg Tate:  Utter Negrocity:  Black Art and Consciousness

Jazz Studies W4930
Tuesday/Thursday, 5:40pm-6:55pm
313 Pupin Laboratories

An interdisciplinary course focusing on the convergence of race consciousness, democratic desire, black protest and performance in the forging of a distinctly African American psyche and African American music from the 18th century to the present, as articulated in music, writing, film, dance, speech and visual art.

John Szwed: "The New Thing": Jazz 1955-1980

Music W4508
Tuesday, 4:10pm-6:00pm
701A Dodge Hall

An examination of the new jazz that emerged shortly after the middle of the 20th century.  Includes the work of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Carla Bley, Albert Ayler, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago; the economics and politics of the period; parallel developments in other arts; the rise of new performance spaces, recording companies, and collectives; and the accomplishments of the music and hte problems it raised for jazz performance and criticism.

Brent Hayes Edwards:  Jazz and The Literary Imagination

Jazz Studies W4900
Tuesday/Thursday, 10:35am-11:50am
516 Hamilton Hall

Focuses on jazz as inspiration for twentieth-century literature, from the blues poetry of the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary fiction, and on how writers have discovered or intuited formal models and political implications in black music. Discusses literary efforts (including autobiography, poetry, historiography, and criticism) by musicians themselves.  Explores links between musical form and literary innovation; between musical analysis (improvisation, rhythm, syncopation, harmony)and the medium of writing; how music suggests modes of social interaction or political potential to be articulated in language; how the performance of a poem is related to its text.  Materials may include writings and recordings by Jacques Attali, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Kurt Schwitters, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, Ella Fitzgerald, William Melvin Kelley, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Gayl Jones, Michael Ondaatje, Joseph Jarman, Nathaniel Mackey, and Harryette Mullen, among others.

Courses Regularly Offered:

Ann Douglas: American Literature & Culture: The Beat Generation

Robert G. O’Meally: Jazz and American Culture

Christopher Washburne: Jazz (history survey); Jazz Transcription & Analysis

Course Offerings by Semester

Fall 2008
Gwen Ansell: South African Jazz
Ben Waltzer: Jazz Improvisation: Theory, History, Practice

Spring 2008
Wolfram Knauer: Jazz in Europe: European Jazz

Fall 2007
William Lowe: I’ll Jazz You on the Radio

Summer 2007
Laura Johnson: Jazz as a Model of Teaching and Organization

Spring 2007
Brent Hayes Edwards: Jazz and the Literary Imagination
George E. Lewis: Post-1960s Jazz
William Lowe: Jazz Demo Harlem

Fall 2006
Laura Johnson: Jazz in the K-12 Curriculum
William Lowe: Survey of African-American Music

Spring 2006
John Szwed: Jazz and Film

Fall 2005
Robin D.G. Kelley: Anthropology of Jazz
George E. Lewis: Post-1950s Jazz

Spring 2005
George E. Lewis: Black Atlantic Sonic Texts
Robert G. O’Meally: Art of the Improvisors
Sherrie Tucker: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies
Christopher Washburne: New York Jazz Historiography
Salim Washington: Jazz Musicians as Intellectuals

Fall 2004
George E. Lewis: Theorizing Improvisation; Music, Race, and Nation
Sherrie Tucker: Gender, Race and Jazz
Salim Washington: Cultural Practices of African American Music Makers

Other Recent Courses:

Krin Gabbard: Jazz and Film

Robert G. O’Meally: The Harlem Renaissance

Farah Jasmine Griffin: Seminar on Billie Holiday; African American Music Among the Discourses

John Szwed: Miles Davis

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© 2008, Columbia University Center for Jazz Studies.
Last Updated September 2, 2008.