Benjamin Cawthra, Ph.D.

Biography

Benjamin Cawthra is a U.S. cultural and public historian. His book Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz (University of Chicago Press, 2011) examines the evolving representation of jazz subjects from the swing era of the 1930s to the black nationalist 1960s. He has also published essays on musicians Miles Davis (2001) and Duke Ellington (2016); boxer Jack Johnson (2019); and photographer/curator Lee Tanner (2021). He is an associate director of the Lawrence de Graaf Center for Oral and Public History, where he is the host of the Outspoken podcast. He has directed or curated several history exhibitions for the Center, including New Birth of Freedom: Civil War to Civil Rights in California (Fullerton Arboretum and Great Park Gallery, 2011/2012); Hard Times in the OC: Voices from the Great Recession (Oakland Museum of California, 2013); and Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club featuring the photography of Kathy Sloane (Pollak Library/Atrium Gallery, 2015). Other curated exhibitions include Miles: A Miles Davis Retrospective (Missouri History Museum, 2001); Herb Snitzer: Photographs from the Last Years of Metronome (Sheldon Art Galleries, 2008); Federal Art Project: American Design (2017); and 52nd Street: Jazz and the Photography of William Gottlieb (2022) both for the Great Park Gallery. He also served as an on-camera consultant for the documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Stanley Nelson, 2019). He has led study tours to Florence, Italy in the CSUF College of Humanities and Social Sciences Study Abroad program and has been awarded the Bakken Award for Outstanding History Faculty, the CSUF Award for Scholarly and Creative Activity, and the College for the Humanities and Social Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award.

Dr. Cawthra’s current projects include an exhibition on Dorothea Lange’s photographs in California during the Great Depression and World War II and a book on the US image of World War II and postwar Italy.