Women’s Bands in America Performing Music and Gender (Florence)

Women’s Bands in America is the first comprehensive exploration of women’s bands across the three centuries in American history. Sullivan will trace women’s emerging roles in society as seen through women’s bands—concert and marching—spanning three centuries of American history. The author will explore town, immigrant, industry, family, school, suffrage, military, jazz, and rock bands, adopting a variety of methodologies and theoretical lenses in order to assemble and interrogate their findings within the context of women’s roles in American society over time. The presenter brings together a series of disciplines in this unique work, including music education, musicology and American history.

Jill M. Sullivan is an Associate Professor of Instrumental Music Education at ASU, where she teaches instrumental methods, assessment, instrumental literature, and psychology of music and research methods.  Her research agenda includes assessment practices and histories of bands. In 2011, she published her book Bands of Sisters: Women’s Military Bands during WW II. She recently completed a second book Women’s Bands in America: Performing Music and Gender published in 2016. Prior to her seventeen-years at ASU, she served on the music faculties of the University of Oklahoma and Augustana College.