THE VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM , LONDON
Sounds of Hope & Glory
This six-week course delves into the V&A's catalogue of prints, posters, photographs, play bills, and entertainment graphics. Drawing on the works of distinct Caribbean intellectuals, Marcus Garvey, CLR James, Claudia Jones and Stuart Hall, we trace how their revolutionary output can be found within British soul, R&B, lover’s rock, dub-poetry, jazz funk, jungle, UK garage, Grime and Afrobeats.
‘Sound of Hope & Glory’ will explore Black music in Britain and the complexities of early Music Hall awash with gendered and racial stereotyping that gave way to Black performative subversion of racism.
Under academic review: the classed, racialised and moral rebelliousness of Jazz; an examination of how hi-life (highlife), calypso, ska, rocksteady, and reggae succeeded as post-war affirmations of identity and belonging for Black émigrés in Britain.
‘Sounds of Hope & Glory’ offers a prime opportunity to consider how Black music in Britain was influenced by radical, and at times revolutionary arguments, criticisms, predictions, and recommendations against and about British colonial and post-colonial thought, and the effects of the politicisation of racialised identities in what was assertively christened ‘the Mother Country’. Students will reminisce, share oral testimony, and draw on their own collective memories, lived experiences and personal recollections as invested fans and curious music lovers. Official Site
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY, LONDON
Race, Gender & the Media
Incorporating the footage-rich format of Contemporary Black Music Culture presentations and lectures, RG&M was re-launched for undergraduate study at Syracuse University in London in January 2010.
Using prime empirical evidence, students are guided through the history and working practices and ethics of the British print and broadcast media. The UK class system and this country's entrenched cultural and gendered divisions are explored in order to ascertain how and why the print and broadcast behemoths reflect society, racial and ethnic minorities and the sexes in the way they do.
Black British Music: Exploring Identity through Sound
This course examines racial, cultural and social identities and their shaping of inherited and imported musical forms. Key historic periods provide the basis of cultural and social anthropological study through which the traditions and migration (enforced and voluntary) of people and their music created social change, adapted to (and would eventually come to represent) parts of the UK’s ever-changing population.
The course traces how jazz, ska, reggae, soul, Afrobeat and rap became anglicised. It will also determine the profound impact British colonialism, the pre, inter and post-war years and the domestic political, racial, gendered and generational conflicts that followed the ‘end of Empire’ had on the cultivation of modern British black music.
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY, LONDON
Adjunct Professor
‘Breaking America’: exploring national identity & culture via the transatlantic success of British music
Breaking America...' is an undergraduate music, sociology, media, culture and music industry studies course.
Utilising the commercial and cultural achievements of a variety of British musicians from the 1960s through to the 2000s who 'broke' America commercially and culturally, 'Breaking America...' deconstructs the 'special relationship’ that exists between the United Kingdom and the USA in order to determine why success in America (beyond revenue) remains an important marker for domestic views on artistic accomplishment.
The creation, expression, sale, promotion, digestion and response to music will be examined in order to understand music's sociological importance, creative roots and commodification.
Social and political history, British regionality, social class, gender, race, sexual orientation musical, lyrical and vocal proficiency will also be explored in order to illuminate what 'Breaking America...' has meant (and continues to mean) to the British music-maker (and industry) at work within different musical styles and at different times in contemporary transatlantic history.
Race, Class & Gender in Media
This class analyses representations of social class, racial and ethnic identity, and gender and sexuality in media.
We begin our work with two assumptions. First, that media both shape and are shaped by social conceptions. Second, that these categories—race, class, and gender—are embodied, that is, they describe different physical bodies that inhabit real, lived environments. From there, students learn to identify central themes and problems in representing differences of race/ethnicity, social class, and sexuality.
UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER, HARROW
Initially employed part-time to provide thesis tutorial supervision for students on the Commercial Music (BA Hons) Degree, Jacqueline was invited to become co-module leader on the Commercial Music Degree’s Pop Music & Culture module, pathway leader on two additional modules devoted to the study of music sociology and to assist in the admissions process.
She also served as a Personal Tutor and became a Senior Lecturer in 2014. Before leaving the university in 2017, Jacqueline was a researcher on the university’s Arts & Humanities Council funded Bass Culture research project.
OTHER LECTURES
Suffolk University, College of Arts & Sciences
Boston | 2007
Following Congress' autumn debate about the language used within rap (following the shift of criticism from Don Imus' insults of the Rutgers Women's Basketball team), Contemporary Black Music Culture explored the journey the 'N' Word has taken within modern entertainment. Just how influential has our recreational media - cinema, television, stand up comedy, music and print - been in changing meaning and response to this epithet since the 1970s? And has the defence that the use of the ‘N' word holds different meaning in different context swelled the defence against black people?
Suffolk University College of Arts & Sciences
Boston | 2006
Contemporary Black Music Culture delved into the choppy waters of rap music's relationship with American law for two bespoke presentations:
'From the Spray Can to The Supreme Court...' explored how rap music and hip hop culture operated against the law - from the early days of graffiti through to landmark music-related court cases.
Nearly a year after Boston's Mayor Thomas Menino banned the wearing of 'Stop Snitching' t-shirts, and just three months after female rapper Lil Kim began her prison sentence for perjury, Contemporary Black Music Culture examined 'Code of The Streets: Rap & the Law of Snitching' through the musical works, print and broadcast interviews given by rappers who extolled the act of a knowing silence.
National Film Theatre
London | 2005
The National Film Theatre commissioned four illustrated Contemporary Black Music Culture lectures on black music's relationship with film to mark the UK's annual Black History Month celebrations. These bespoke presentations comprised performance and movie footage and explored where music and film combine, implode and divide:
'Reggae Cinema' How has reggae music and dancehall culture been represented on celluloid since Jimi Cliff's 1972 classic, The Harder They Come'? Why did Shotta's never obtain a full commercial release? How effective have cameo roles been to the musical careers of Beenie Man, Marcia Griffiths and Ninjaman s?
'Motion Picture Soundtracks' Above The Rim? Deep Cover? Soundtracks revived interest in populist black cinema in the 1990s and ensured that an OST (original motion picture soundtrack) without a rapper on board is an unthinkable commercial proposition.
'The N Word: Nigger. Nigga. Niggaz' The use and spelling of this word takes on different forms but why has it become more acceptable on celluloid than within a rap stanza? From Saturday Night Fever to 50 Cent, we'll unfurl its recent journey within mainstream entertainment.
'The Rise of the Rapper/Actor' Five rappers have been nominated for Oscars in recent years. It doesn't matter if you don't know who they are since the rise of the rapper/ actor is a relentless one.
Berklee College of Music
Women’s History Month, Boston | 2005
Following her BTOT (Berklee Teacher on Teacher) presentations, Jacqueline Springer was invited back to Berklee to explore the representation of women within modern rap and soul music via two bespoke illustrated lectures for Women's History Month, How The Female emcee Became an Endangered Species and How Rap Changed The Female r&b and pop artist.
ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS
49th BFI/Times London Film Festival, London
51st BFI/Times London Film Festival, London
B Supreme Festival, London
BBC Blast Festival, London
Berklee College of Music, Boston
British Film Institute/National Film Theatre, London
Foundation of International Education, London
Lillian Bayliss School of Technology, London
London College of Communication, London
London College of Fashion, London
NYU - Clive Davis Dept of Recorded Music, New York
Princeton University, New Jersey
Purdue University, Indiana
Suffolk University, College of Arts & Sciences, Boston
Tate Modern, London
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), London
Tupac Reinterpreted Season, National Film Theatre, London
University of Turku, Finland
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The Centre for Contemporary Music Cultures,
Goldsmith's, University of London