Jennifer Messelink

In 2023 I received a PhD in Musicology from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. I hold an MA in Music from the University of Alberta, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Victoria’s School of Music. I recently completed a two-year SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University in the Department of African American Studies.

My current book project details a cultural history of mid-century mood music and its relationship to race, gender, and technology in postwar American society. I am interested in how the concept of “moods” emerged as a way to describe the shifting role of popular music in everyday life. My research contributes to music studies in three distinct ways: 1) by historicizing the development of background music in social spaces and the home through the interplay of technology and aesthetics, 2) by highlighting the Black intellectual and musical connection to a type of music often associated with white middlebrow audiences, 3) and by documenting the intersection of jazz and popular music in the emergence of the long play record (LP) as a concept format.

Before coming to Laurier, I taught courses at McGill and the University of Victoria on popular music genres, popular music in American society, and popular music and social justice. I have also given guest lectures on punk, and Hawaiian music history.