Join us on Thursday, November 15, at 6:00 pm, for the 2018 Zankel Lecture by Janet Borgerson, Independent Scholar, and Jonathan Schroeder, School of Communication, Rochester Institute of Technology.

Few accounts of Cold War cultural diplomacy mention vinyl records or their liner notes, music, and cover art. This presentation explores the contribution of midcentury American vinyl records, as media artifacts, to the imagination and construction of consumer lifestyles, modern US identity, and global citizenship, and examines resonating soft power concerns of the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Skidmore College Departments of Management and Business, Art History, and American Studies, and the Tang Teaching Museum. The Zankel Lecture is free and open to the public.

About the Speakers

Janet Borgerson’s research focuses on the intersections of philosophy, culture, and business studies, with an overarching focus on how identity forms and functions within organizations, markets, and consumption contexts, including mid-century media. She has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and often draws upon her background in art history, poetry, and film studies. She is the author of Caring and Power in Female Leadership: A Philosophical Approach (2018) and co-author of From Chinese Brand Culture to Global Brands (2013).

Jonathan Schroeder writes about the intersections of branding, midcentury media, and visual culture. He is the William A. Kern Professor in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. He received a B.A. from the University of Michigan, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has lived and worked in the US, Sweden, and England. His books include Visual Consumption (Routledge, 2002), Brand Culture (Routledge, 2006, co-editor), Routledge Companion to Visual Organization (2014, co-editor), Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America (MIT Press, 2017, co-author), and August Strindberg and Visual Culture: The Emergence of Optical Modernity in Image, Text, and Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2018, co-editor).