Revisiting the Archives: Nathan Davis, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Jazz Studies Movement

Abstract The social and political conditions that gave rise to the struggle for Black studies in higher education also created a demand for the institutional recognition of Black aesthetic traditions. Among the educators who responded to this historical moment was jazz musician, educator, and institution builder Nathan Davis, whose work at the University of Pittsburgh helped establish jazz studies as a legitimate field of academic inquiry. Centering Davis’s initiatives at the University of Pittsburgh from 1968 to 2013, this article positions him as an internationally engaged jazz pedagogue whose work cultivated transnational networks linking Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States through artistic collaboration, educational exchange, and cultural diplomacy. Drawing on materials from the Pitt Jazz Archives, including correspondence, interviews, and institutional records, the study examines Davis’s international outreach, the establishment of the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame, and community-centered initiatives such as the Sonny Rollins International Jazz Archives. In doing so, it argues that Davis mobilized Black musical practices as forms of knowledge production capable of expanding institutional space, fostering transnational solidarities, and improvising community across geographic, cultural, and political boundaries.