Document Type

Grant

Project Title

Trail Trax 2.020: Tracking the Electoral Soundscape

Principal Investigator

Dana Gorzelany-Mostak

Publication Date

2021

College or Department

Music

Funder

Provost

Abstract

Trax on the Trail is a Georgia College-sponsored website devoted to the study of American presidential campaign music. The interdisciplinary team that I assembled for this project includes students as well as academic experts from the fields of political science, musicology, sociology, history, media studies, and ethnomusicology, across the U.S. and Canada. Committed to the ethos of public history, the Trax on the Trailteam develops accessible scholarship on the subject of music and elections.

I have supervised the publication of over forty essays and podcasts, collaborated with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Clinton Presidential Library to create open-access resources for educators, and developed innovative research tools for journalists and scholars. Equally committed to advancing scholarly inquiry into the function of sound in electioneering, I have presented my work in classrooms, community centers, and colleges around the country, as well as published my research in scholarly journals, including Music & Politics, American Music and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. Trax on the Trail has been cited by the BBC, The Guardian, Slate, The Boston Herald, Pacific Standard, and Elite Daily.

In order to efficiently conduct research on the 2020 soundscape and build the content for our campaign music database (Trail Trax 2.020), I allocated the Faculty Research Grant to fund two research assistants, Haley Strassburger and Sarah Griffin. The resource that we created has been valuable to scholars researching campaign music, as well as to journalists, students, educators, and others who wish to learn more about the role sound plays in shaping our opinion of presidential candidates.

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