Join us on Thursday, 4th September at St Cecilia’s Hall for one of our informal talk series lectures with historian Jayme Kurland. In 1946, the electric guitar company Fender began its operations in southern California and relied on a small group of Mexican American women to wire amplifiers, wind pickups, and assemble their products, among other tasks. In this talk, historian Jayme Kurland discusses who the women of Fender were, the unique skills that they brought to their work, and their impact on American popular music. Jayme Kurland is a Ph.D. candidate in history at George Mason University in Virginia, US. She has worked with musical instrument collections in curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix. Her dissertation project, “Instrumental Women: Amplifying Women’s Labor at Fender Electric Instruments Company (1946-1965),” examines the contributions of Mexican American women workers to the manufacturing of electric guitars and amplifiers in Fullerton, California. Jayme also founded the digital history website Instrumental Women which highlights the contributions of women to musical instrument making, past and present.