Beth Fowler
Biography
Beth Fowler received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at Wayne State University, and has taught a wide variety American and world history classes, with special focus on popular culture and the arts. Her research interests include popular culture and consumerism, the U.S. civil rights movement, urban history, gender and sexuality, and 20th-century African-American History. Her first book, Rock and Roll, Desegregation Movements, and Post-Civil Rights Racism: An “Integrated Effort,” which looks at how rock and roll music and media coverage of civil rights protests converged to encourage support for the desegregation of public spaces and moderate racial equality among middle-class black and white teenagers during the 1950s and 1960s, was published by Lexington Books in 2022. She is currently working on a new book project, Power Broker for a New Generation: Frances Williams Preston and Gender Politics in the Country Music Industry, 1948-2004, which examines the life and work of BMI president Frances Williams Preston, one of the first women executives in the popular music industry, and how her gender performances influenced corporate and managerial identities for women entering the workplace during and after the Second-Wave Women’s Movement, is under contract with Vanderbilt University Press.