The program attracts a diverse range of teachers, performers, scholars, and intellectuals from every background with a shared passion for America's music. Students are encouraged to approach jazz with a broad lens and develop their own topics, drawing on approaches that include performance, composition, popular music, histories of race, gender, and sexuality, film, world musical traditions, and more. Graduates of our program have gone on to complete doctorates in musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory and related fields. Others teach at community colleges and have used their degrees to enhance their credentials as teachers, performers, or archivists. In addition to its acclaimed faculty, Rutgers University-Newark is home to the Institute of Jazz Studies, the largest public access jazz library in the world. The institute contains correspondence, sheet music, and other materials that once belonged to virtually every major figure in jazz history, including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Mary Lou Williams, and many others. Students work closely with experts at the Institute and are eligible for scholarships that allow further study of the archive's materials.<br>M.A. - 36 credits