Event overview
Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance
'Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance' (MIT Press, 2021) discusses vintage dance records and art sleeves from a golden age of album cover design to reveal their neglected contribution to American identity. Beyond issues of album cover design, this project emphasizes social and cultural issues that animate the LPs. Via photography, liner notes, graphic design, and music, midcentury dance records oscillate between modernity – dancing the latest steps – and tradition – dancing ancestral steps – as they narrate a history of American immigration, cultural rituals, and popular fads, fashions, and trends. Borgerson and Schroeder are a creative team: writing, teaching, lecturing – and collecting vinyl records – together for over 25 years. They draw upon interdisciplinary scholarship to address popular culture’s critical intersections with issues of class, gender, and race. They hope to illuminate the constructed world of the postwar dance LP and, with luck, change the way people look at record album covers.
Janet Borgerson studied philosophy, economics, and writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, completing postdoctoral work at Brown University. She is currently a Senior Wicklander Fellow at the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, DePaul University.
Jonathan Schroeder is the William A. Kern Professor in the School of Communication, Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Their book 'Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America' (MIT Press) was named a best book of 2017 by the Financial Times and a best music book of 2017 by Vinyl Factory. Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance was a 2022 finalist for the Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research, Dance Studies Association and a finalist for the Prize for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. A third book in the midcentury records trilogy, Designed for Success: Better Living and Self-Improvement with Midcentury Instructional Records, is in production at MIT Press.
Music Research Series events are free and open to all.
The Music Research Series is designed to help postgraduate students advance their research and careers. The events stimulate exchange, hones skills, facilitates the creation of professional networks and helps to consolidate the department’s postgraduate community. Attendance is strongly recommended for all postgraduate students (MA, MMus and PGR) in Music but of course undergraduates, music researchers, and visitors from across the college and the community are also most welcome to these public lectures.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 9 Mar 2023 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
