Visiting Assistant Professor Stephanie Doktor received an award from the American Musicological Society for her article, “Finding Florence Mills: The Voice of the Harlem Jazz Queen in the Compositions of William Grant Still and Edmund Thornton Jenkins,” published in the Journal of the Society for American Music. The award was presented at the American Musicological Society virtual conference on Nov. 21.
Despite Mills’ overwhelming popularity among New Negro Renaissance communities, she is little known today. Disregard for Black creative life in the early 20th century undercut preservation of her music, leaving only a meager collection. Doktor analyzes the music of Still and Jenkins that was scored for Mills and posits a new way to hear her voice through these compositions — one that contests the written reception of her racially biased listeners.
The committee was impressed with the timeliness of Doktor’s work in addressing musical constructions of race, modernity, and history. Doktor supported her arguments with a mixture of deep archival work and strong engagement with relevant, contemporary theorization. The committee celebrated this essay because Doktor helps the reader “hear” Mills, although no recordings exist, through a detailed examination of compositions written for the singer, revealing how voices often subvert gendered and racialized stereotypes.
Cambridge University Press is making the article available for free for 6 months because of the award.