Dr Andy Fry

Andy Fry joined King’s in 2007, having previously taught at the University of California, San Diego and, as a visiting professor, at Berkeley. He completed his graduate studies at Oxford (D.Phil., 2004), and has also studied at the Universities of Lancaster, California (Berkeley), and Pennsylvania.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Jazz
• African-American music
• Music in C20th France
• Music and race
• Historiography 

Andy Fry's principal research areas are jazz (particularly pre-1960, race, gender, and historiography) and music in twentieth-century France. In addition, he has strong interests in musical theatre, in all its many forms. Several of these concerns come together in his book Paris Blues: African American Music in France, 1920–1960 (Chicago, 2014). His current research concerns the revival and recreation of New Orleans jazz, in the United States and around the world, at mid-century.

Andy welcomes applications for PhD topics related to any of his research interests. For more details, please see his full research profile.

Teaching

Andy teaches jazz history and related topics at all levels of the curriculum at King’s. He commonly offers a first-year introductory module focusing on early jazz and swing. In the second and third years, he teaches modules on Post-war Jazz and Jazz on Film, among other topics. His graduate seminar in Jazz Studies provides a survey of this interdisciplinary field to musicologists, ethnomusicologists and other interested students. He’s also often taught Historiography and Criticism at the MMus level, and coordinated BMus dissertations.