Kevin Strait

I am currently a fourth year candidate and a native of the Maryland-DC area. I graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997 with a degree in African-American studies and a concentration in music. After college I was an intern at the St. Pauls School in Concord, NH, and taught courses in literature, history, and jazz performance. I was also a teacher of ninth and eleventh grade American and world history at the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, CT for two years.

After teaching, I came back home to the DC area to begin my graduate studies. In 2000, I completed my Masters in American Studies at GW. My Masters work reflected my broad interests in the humanities as my research allowed me to explore the area even further, with frequent trips to the Smithsonian, the National Archives, and the Library of Congress. Along with a variety of research papers including one that discussed the social history and musical culture of DC based Pentecostal churches and an independent project of photographic research conducted at the LOC, I also wrote a thesis entitled, “The Jazz Artist as a Response to Minstrelsy.” This thesis primarily focused on radical black intellectualism during the early 1960’s and examined the responses of black artists to the racialized confines of minstrelsy as well as the overall emergence of an acculturated “protest tradition” within the Civil Rights Movement, culminating my various interests in race, music, and cultural and intellectual history.

My Ph.D. work thus far has served as an extension of these interests. In my second year as a Ph.D. candidate, I completed my class work as well as my first conference paper entitled, “The Man Can’t Put No Thing On Me: Minstrelsy and Intertextual Identities in Superfly.” I also completed my comprehensive exams in social/public history, cultural history, and 20th century black literature.

Along the way I have worked with Professor Horton as a Research Assistant under the National Park Service and Laetitia-Woods Brown Fellowships. I’ve had a chance to do research at area public historical cites including the Frederick Douglass Memorial and the Robert E. Lee House. I have served as a grading assistant for Professor Vlach’s Intro to Folklore class and I have also worked with Professor McAlister as a T.A. for the intro course in American Studies. I am also in the preliminary stages of my dissertation, which will focus on tracing the history of the “goodwill tours” in the State Department and inspecting the politicized role of African-American artists during the Cold War. I can be reached at kstrait@gwu.edu.