About

Specialties: higher education • writing • research • arts/music • digital humanities • composition • digital media

Subject matter expertise: jazz history • the life and music of Bill Evans • the Harlem Renaissance • jazz and race • mental illness and the artistic temperament

I am an active scholar, musician, and writer who specializes in jazz history and American music, the Harlem Renaissance, and issues of race and class. I also have a keen interest, and passion for, the life and music of pianist Bill Evans and interdisciplinary research in mental illness and the artistic temperament.

I hold the Doctor of Letters degree (with a concentration in jazz history) from Drew University where my dissertation was entitled, “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: Jazz as Social Commentary in Harlem of the 1920s.”

I was recently awarded the 2019 Morroe Berger – Benny Carter – Ed Berger Jazz Research Fellowship at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ.

I spend the majority of my time teaching and writing; my work can be seen in publications by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Salem Press, Scarecrow Press, University of Michigan Press, ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press, and SAGE Publications. 

 

 

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