x1vuD

general interest
Sherrie Tucker is Professor of
American Studies at the University
of Kansas. She is the author of Swing
Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s
and coeditor of Big Ears: Listening
for Gender in Jazz Studies, both also
published by Duke University Press.
“The publication of Dance Hall Democracy elevates cultural
studies scholarship to new levels of sophistication and
significance.”—GEORGE LIPSITZ, author of Midnight
at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story
“Sherrie Tucker has given us a meticulously researched and
beautifully written evocation of the Hollywood Canteen.
This original and highly creative work is a model of cultural
history by a scholar of exemplary insight, intelligence, and
sensitivity. Tucker brilliantly reads the dance floor to reveal
meanings created, challenged, and negotiated by the dancers.
Dance Floor Democracy insists upon a complex and multidimensional
portrait of a period and a place too often viewed
through the lens of nostalgia.”—FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN,
author of Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive
Politics During World War II
Dance Floor Democracy
The Social Geography of Memory
at the Hollywood Canteen
sherrie tucker
Dance F loor Democ racy
Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood
Canteen was the most famous of the
patriotic home-front nightclubs where civilian
hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted
men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening
night, when the crowds were so thick that
Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom
window to give her welcome speech,
the storied dance floor where movie stars
danced with soldiers has been the subject
of much U.S. nostalgia about the “Greatest
Generation.” Drawing from oral histories
with civilian volunteers and military guests
who danced at the wartime nightclub,
Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent
the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees’ varied experiences and
recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some
recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub’s dance floor and in Los
Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian
ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the “Good War” in popular
culture narratives. For Tucker, swing dancing’s torque—bodies sharing weight,
velocity, and turning power without guaranteed outcomes—is an apt metaphor
for the jostling narratives, different perspectives, unsteady memories, and
quotidian acts that comprise social history.
Sherrie Tucker
The Social GeoGraphy of MeMory aT The hollywood canTeen
also by Sherrie Tucker
Big Ears:
Listening for Gender
in Jazz Studies
Nichole T. Rustin and Sherrie Tucker, editors
pape, $27.95/£17.99
978–0–8223–4320–2 / 2008
Swing Shift:
“All–Girl” Bands of the 1940s
paper, $26.95tr/£17.99
978–0–8223–2817–9 / 2001
14
AMERICAN STUDIES
October 416 pages, 36 illustrations paper, 978–0–8223–5757–5, $26.95/£17.99 cloth, 978–0–8223–5742–1, $94.95/£62.00