Music and Movement Speaker Series

Dr. Danielle Fosler-Lussier will be presenting a lecture entitled "Women, Music, and Propaganda: Pushing America’s Music onto a World Stage."

From the 1880s on, much of the work of supporting music education and composition in the United States was organized and funded by women, many of them members of state music teachers’ associations, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the National Federation of Music Clubs. A key part of their mission was to prove to people elsewhere—especially Europeans—that classical music from the United States was worthy of respect. For instance, the National Federation of Music Clubs aimed “to make America the Music Center of the World.” This talk explores the post-colonial and international pressures that inspired their work, and briefly describes how the women’s organizing efforts contributed to later US government propaganda efforts to move music overseas.

Danielle Fosler-Lussier is Professor of Music at the Ohio State University. Her interests include global mobility, the politics of music, and women’s roles in musical life, as well as how we teach and learn music history. Her most recent book, Music on the Move, is freely available online from the University of Michigan Press, thanks to a grant from The Open Monograph Initiative and the Ohio State University Libraries. Her 2015 book Music in America’s Cold War Diplomacy is accompanied by an online database of U.S. cultural presentations from the 1950s to the 1980s. She currently serves as the Vice President of the American Musicological Society.

Room #

Zoom

Address