Bill Doggett has established a national reputation as a historian, archivist and lecturer specialized in the areas of Race, Technology and Early Recorded Sound

He was commissioned in 2015 by The Library of Congress Recorded Sound Division to create a Pilot on the challenged and problematic history of ideas about race embedded in sound recordings at the dawn of recorded sound for The National Jukebox.

 Created during the era of Trayvon Martin, Ferguson and Charlottesville, the rise of White Nationalism prevented the launch of his well researched and thought provoking Pilot.

Doggett’s work is based on his archive of early recorded sound recordings that expressly focused on ideations about race 1895-1925.

The vast repertoire of these early sound recordings re calibrated   turn of the Century American entertainment love affair with Black Face Minstrelsy. That love affair brought forward from the Theater Stage into the new technological advance–the phonograph record and phonograph- re calibrated pre Civil War stereotypes about Black identity that concretized pejorative ideas about Black Americans who had only 30 years earlier been enslaved.  This re calibration and commercialized mass production of stereotyped ideas into shellac impacted the experience and understanding of race and race relations in the 20th and 21st centuries.

In June 2022, Doggett’s Race and Performing Arts Archive received a Preservation Assistance Award amplifying further his national profile and recognition in the field.

Representative samples of his scholarship on the Black Swan 78rpm recordings in his archive can be explored on his YouTube channel:blackbrownbeige55 https://www.youtube.com/@blackbrownbeige55/videos

Doggett lectures in University residencies and conferences on the interdisciplinary subjects of race, early recorded sound and technology.  He welcomes your inquiries and invitations