Scholarship & Research
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Item Structures of cultural memory: the photography of Tom Wright(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2022) Zignego, Jordan Robert; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Dennis AigThe photography of Tom Wright, archived at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, is both art and history. Wright captured many musicians on stage and off at some of the most pivotal moments in both their own careers and in the history of rock music. Although Wright played an integral part with various bands, and produced an amazing body of photographical work in a career that spanned from the 1960s to the 1980s, he has remained unknown. This dissertation argues that Wright belongs in the pantheon of rock photographers as a chronicler and artist; that Wright's photography, and the manner in which it was created, represent the turmoil and conflicts of his era (1960s-1980s) on which he had a specific Anglo-American take as a photographer born in America, but educated in England; that the so-called rock 'n roll life is embodied in Wright's life, including the concept of auto-destruction, that is a primary reason for Wright's lack of recognition; and Wright's relative obscurity is due in large part to his own refusal to work for any publications but to take photographs for their own sake. Wright's photography tells a more nuanced story of rock music. By altering the collectively accepted narrative, his photographs provide a sense of awakening for all and touch on shared memories and how society remembers. Wright's work ultimately offers a more inclusive perspective on how photographs affect both memory and accepted history.Item Predilection, progress and prejudice: coon songs and the construction of race in nineteenth century American culture(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Matzinger, Ryan Joseph; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert Rydell; Billy Smith (co-chair)This is a study about the history of American culture and the construction of race through the musical idiom of coon songs. It is an examination of the jazz narrative and the role of blackface minstrelsy and coon songs, as they directly relate to the jazz tradition and the construction of race in nineteenth-century America. The modes of inquiry utilized are from the American Studies methodology and resulted in a more thorough, in-depth understanding of the construction of American race ideology, with a more complete, holistic perception of the jazz narrative. In a methodology that blends the excavation of less standard resources and research techniques that approach American history from further outside the chronological strictures and modes of conventional historical inquiry, the American Studies jazz-scholar-musician is compelled to live by, creatively inquire about, and more thoroughly comprehend the rationally intuitive values of jazz music and cultural literacy. In this study of race construction, coon songs, and the American jazz narrative as regarded from a revised conventional modality of jazz as American Studies, and American Studies as jazz, what's really on the line is the way American culture cultivates and also demolishes social and racial hierarchies through musical idioms.