Dena Epstein Committee Annual Report 2022

submitted by Anita Breckbill

Current Roster

  • Bret McCandless, outgoing chair (2022)
  • Anita Breckbill, incoming chair (2023)
  • Tamar Barzel, member (2024)
  • Rick McRae, member (2025)

List of Previous Goals and Progress Made

  1. Grant award to applicants, prioritizing applications for research into Black/African-American music.
    • Award granted to four recipients, from a pool of eighteen applications:
      • ​Michael Cooper, for his book-length biography of Margaret Allison Bonds (1913-1972), utilizing archival sources in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., for which the committee has recommended awarding the full $1,850 requested.​
      • Michael Kramer, for his book-length project This Machine Kills Fascists: What the Folk Music Revival Can Teach Us About the Digital Age, utilizing archival sources in Texas, Illinois, and Florida, for which the committee has recommended awarding $2,235 to fund one leg of his trip.
      • David Rugger, for his book-length project Simple Man: Klaus Nomi’s Life and Art​, utilizing archival sources in Boston and New York, for which the committee has recommended awarding $2,235 to fund one leg of his trip.
      • Emmalouise St. Amand, for her dissertation on semi-professional and amateur Black girl groups working in New York City between 1950 and 1965 and their contribution to popular music history, utilizing archival sources in Brooklyn, for which the committee has recommended awarding the full $1,880 requested.
  2. Appoint new member of the committee.
    • Rick McRae was appointed as a new member of the committee in Spring of 2022.
  3. Disseminate the call for applicants widely and to a broad group of music-related associations.
    • The call for applicants for the FY 2022-2023 award was disseminated to the Music Library Association, the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, the National Association of African American Studies, and the Society for Ethnomusicology.

List of Future Goals

  1. Review applications and grant the Award.
    • The granting of the award (totaling $1000) we expect will go to one or several applicants, including members from other fine arts professional organizations, as prioritized in the FY 2019-2020 strategic plan.
    • The closing date for applications was July 31, 2022. The committee received five completed applications which will be reviewed in September.
  2. Appoint new member of the committee in Spring of 2023 (MLA Strategic Objective 2.1).
  3. Disseminate the call for applicants widely and to a broad group of music-related associations (MLA Strategic Objective 1.3).
  4. Create a Dena Epstein Award Committee Handbook for the website (MLA Strategic Objective 4.2).