Bill Doggett has established a national reputation as a historian, specialist in historical archives, 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 specialized archives 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 extensive historical archives of early recorded sound that expressly focus on ideations about race from 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 historical archives for the Race and Performing Arts 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 found within these historical archives 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