Jeanette Hall

Jeanette Hall graduated with her Ph.D. from the Department of American Studies in 2018. She is currently the Curriculum Coordinator and Summer School Director at La Pietra, Hawai‘i School for Girls. At La Pietra, she also works to develop curriculum for the school’s new Women’s and Gender Studies program. Her dissertation, “Performances in Swing: A Cultural History of Women Singers of Big Bands, 1930s-1950s,” examines how women jazz and popular singers negotiated race, gender, class, and sexuality through their music and performances during the swing era. She traces the stories of women singers—including Helen Humes, Kay Starr, Helen Forrest, Thelma Carpenter, Louise Tobin, and Maxine Sullivan—to show the shape and significance of women’s gendered labor on and off the stage. Jeanette received her B.A. in English from Boston College, her M.Ed. in Teaching from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and the Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is the former Managing Editor for the American Quarterly and has also worked with UH’s Digital Arts and Humanities Initiative on Women Sing the Blues, a digital project analyzing musical and feminist influences over time and space through close textual examination of blues, jazz, and popular songs. Jeanette’s work has been published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies.