Journal of Jazz Studies (JJS)
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The Electoral College’s Impact on Presidential Mandates and Agendas
No full textThe Electoral College is the method used in every four years to elect the President of the United States. Given that the Electoral College gives the power to elect the president to state-casted votes, the system has in recent years become a source of growing controversy given how two presidents, George Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016, without winning the national popular vote. These elections and the public discourse around them have brought new life to the purpose and impacts of the Electoral College.
This paper uses key presidential elections, including those of John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Harrison, Woodrow Wilson, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, give insight on how the Electoral College should now be understood. In particular, this paper examines the implications of the Electoral College on one fundamental question: Does election to the presidency via the Electoral College route fundamentally affect the ability of a president to govern effectively?
Examining these elections, the context around and impact after these elections, and modern United States political history shows that when the Electoral College is not an extraordinary or exceptionally notable part of an election cycle, the Electoral College does not fundamentally affect the president’s ability to command public and political support required to effectively govern. However, when the Electoral College does become a point of focus during a presidential election and in the beginning of a president’s term, it has wide-ranging impacts. In particular, the College can shape the political and public mandate the president has to lead, shaping their overall agenda for their time in office; cause biases to arise towards certain states and conservative politics; and undermine their ability to serve as a unifying figure. With each modern election having an increased focus on the Electoral College, the system is likely to cause increased polarization and tension with each passing election if serious reforms are not undertaken
Assimilation: How Post-9/11 Government Tactics Have Hindered Muslims From Socioeconomic Integration
No full textThe devastating attacks of 9/11 left life-changing impacts on how the world viewed national security. The United States, at its epicenter, formally overhauled its government strategies and approaches in assured attempts to prevent such occurrences ever again. Thus, the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the implementation of policies reflected new behaviors towards individuals from certain religious or geographic background. While successfully eliminating the recurrence of terrorist attacks of such scale, these extreme approaches vociferosly affected the United States’ Muslim population —many whom have immigrated in pursuit of the ‘American Dream’— from integrating into society.
This paper seeks to establish that post-9/11 policies have perpetuated anti-Muslim bias in the minds of the American people, thus impacting the Muslim population’s ability to integrate into society: measured by sections of Milton Gordon’s assimilation theory. Muslim-Americans are vulnerable to unjust constraints or responsibility for the extremist few, all by a governing body established to serve the interests of all its citizens. Studying the extent these tactics have affected Muslim-Americans highlight limitations of the justice system and reveal calls to action where adequate support should be given. Publicly isolating people ties a negative connotation to their existence, which can cause wider society to disassociate themselves from isolated individuals
Remembering Dan Morgenstern (1929-2024)
No full textThe following is an obituary and tribute to the late Dan Morgenstern, former editor of the Journal of Jazz Studies, and former Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies
Relationship Between Biophysical Properties of Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs) and their Associated Drug Efficacies
No full textAntibiotic resistance is a growing global health threat. One consequence is that patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) are prone to developing antibiotic resistant lung infections caused by multiple strains of bacteria, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Due to the limited number of treatment options for patients with chronic antibiotic resistant infections, there is a need for finding new antibiotics that allow for effective eradication of bacterial infections, such as those in the CF lung. Many antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been annotated in databases and are considered as potential alternatives for current antibiotics. However, in many instances, the suitability of AMPs as drug molecules has not been extensively explored. Here, we propose that certain molecular properties of AMPs favor high antibiotic efficacy. Using information from AMP databases, we combined statistical analyses and machine learning techniques to identify relationships between various biophysical properties of AMPs and their drug efficacies. Analyses from classification and regression trees (CART) and random forests suggest that net charge and maximum average hydrophobic moment are the most important properties in determining if a peptide is useful against P. aeruginosa infections in CF patients. Maximum average hydrophobic residue, average alpha helix propensity score, hydrophobic proportion, and peptide length still contribute to this determination but to lesser degrees. Cation-pi interactions, on the other hand, do not appear to factor into this decision at all. Based on these properties, our current work is focused on designing and experimentally testing new peptides that may have activity against P. aeruginosa infections
Guthrie Ramsey in Conversation with Stefon Harris
No full textOn December 14, 2023, Guthrie Ramsey conducted a master class and spoke with Rutgers-Newark faculty member Stefon Harris as part of Express Newark’s “Blues People” exhibition. Dr. Ramsey opened the afternoon with an excerpt of a film he produced “to tell part of the history of African American music.” For the balance of the lecture, Ramsey explored examples of and pedagogical processes related to a type of “vocalization and musicianship” central to Black musicking in America that “gets passed along through oral and aural culture.” Ramsey and Harris's wide ranging coversation returned to many of these themes while addressing Dr. Ramsey's scholarship--past, present and future
Book Review: Queer Arrangements: Billy Strayhorn and Midcentury Jazz Collaboration. By Lisa Barg. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2023. 288pp. 24.95 paperback.
No full textA Systematic Literature Review on the Intersection of Experiential and Multimedia Learning With Virtual Reality and Its Implications
No full textThis literature review examines the current literature and research surrounding the foundations and applications of experiential and multimedia learning in virtual reality environments. Eleven insightful research papers are discussed, detailing the efforts and results of multimedia learning and experiential learning in virtual reality independently, not combined. The literature, and consequently the literature review, heavily pulls from Kolb’s Experiential Learning model and Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. We find a general trend suggesting the efficacy of creating experiential learning-based lessons and the efficacy of multimedia learning formats. However, based on the literature, combining these two theories and techniques may result in higher student engagement and content retention. This literature review also explores the thresholds for sensory stimuli fidelities necessary to create meaningful, effective, immersive virtual reality content. However, further research will be required to measure attention, retention, and information recall in different virtual reality and multimedia lesson formats, as well as engagement and positive emotions associated with learning
Book Review: Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat That Changed America. By Stephanie Stein Crease. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. 360pp. $34.95.
No full textLonnie Liston Smith: An Oral History
No full textLonnie Liston Smith is an American pianist and keyboard player from Richmond, Virginia, born in 1940. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Music Education and an honorary doctorate from Morgan State University and has performed with Betty Carter, Art Blakey, and Miles Davis. His original music with the Cosmic Echoes has influenced the genres of smooth jazz, jazz funk, acid jazz, and hip hop. Scott Gray Douglass is a bassist and teacher also from Richmond, born in 1984. He is writing a book based on the oral histories of Richmond’s jazz musician educators. The two spoke by telephone in September of 2021. The following conversation is edited for clarity. Footnotes are provided by the co-author for context
Thursday at Miller's: John D'earth on Teaching the Creative Process
No full textAt seventy-three years old, jazz trumpeter/composer/bandleader John D’earth remains a vortex of swirling energy: gigging constantly, ceaselessly composing, and tirelessly teaching. An iconic musician with a world-class reputation, D’earth is a gifted post-bop trumpeter with a fat sound, a dense knowledge of harmony, and a virtuosic sense of rhythm. D’earth is the type of player that would demand attention in any major metropolitan jazz scene, but within the small confines of the Charlottesville, Virginia jazz community, D’earth is a pillar of influence. Simply put, D’earth is the heart and soul of the central Virginia jazz milieu.
Beyond his skills as a performer, D’earth is a revered teacher and mentor. As the Director of Jazz Performance at the University of Virginia, D’earth has certainly helped hundreds of promising young musicians navigate the vicissitudes of institutional learning. But it is D’earth’s work as a teacher outside the academy that will ultimately cement his legacy. D’earth has been leading a Thursday night weekly gig at Miller’s, a beloved tavern in downtown Charlottesville, for over thirty years. Miller’s on Thursdays is a laboratory—a musical workshop—where D’earth holds forth with both his students and his colleagues. On the Miller’s bandstand, D’earth puts professionals next to amateurs, beginners alongside experts. Everyone solos, all players add to the collective musical interplay, and each musician has a voice within the group.
This project engages D’earth in a series of interviews exploring his holistic approach to jazz pedagogy. Beyond interrogating D’earth’s specific teaching system(s), I inquire into his views about both the pitfalls and advantages of jazz in the academy, how improvisation can build social, political, and economic alliances, and the ways in which music can act as both a form of resistance and a strategy for survival in neoliberal times. At the forefront of my agenda is a discussion on how the jazz ecology of Charlottesville was affected by the events of August 12, 2017, when a misguided “Unite the Right” rally ended in the tragic death of Heather Heyer, bringing political upheaval and racial turmoil to the city of Charlottesville. Finally, I dissect the Miller’s phenomenon with D’earth, attempting to explain how this particular location has operated as both a performance environment and important pedagogical space for such a remarkably long time and yielded such a wealth of creativity and access to musical insight