Masayoshi Yamada

His dissertation research explores the social and cultural history of jazz through its various constituencies of fandom.  Through multiple case studies, Masayoshi’s research examines how fans, enthusiasts, and listeners from different social groups made use of music to generate and communicate meanings, define beliefs and values, construct identities, and make sense of a rapidly changing world in the middle twentieth century in the U.S. and beyond.  His most recent publication is “You’re My Pin-up Girl!: The Politics of Jazz Fandom and the Making of Mary Lou Williams in the 1940s,” in Yuichiro Onishi and Fumiko Sakashita, eds., Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).