Educational Programs, 1948-1966

Along with Marshall Stearns's writings, programs and the curricula he prepared for students, jazz musicians and enthusiasts, writers and critics, and others in diverse areas of the arts and academia are the surest windows into his construction of the histories of jazz and jazz dance. Beginning with his Perspectives in Jazz, which he taught over the course of a semester at New York University in 1950, he prepared programs as far afield on giants of jazz, jazz within the tapestry of American mainstream and popular, jazz within the tradition of folk music, jazz as cultural exchange, jazz on film, and jazz dance. Many of the jazz dance programs took the form of lecture/demonstrations, frequently with dancers Leon James and Al Minns. Venues included New York University, the New School for Social Research, Cooper Union, the Institute of International Education, all in New York, Montclair (NJ) State University and other cultural institutions, including Library of Congress, New York Historical Association, American Folklore Society, New York Historical Association, New York Folklore Society, the Scarsdale (NY) Adult School and the Stratford (Ontario) Folk Song and Jazz Festival. Symposia at Music Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts are the most varied and best documented programs in the collection, in part because there are over 40 reel-to-reel tapes and photographs of the proceedings. Contained in this series are lecture texts, program outlines, syllabi, brochures, correspondence, and course materials.