Here's one for you:

The Lindy Binge: the Social and Cultural Functions of Lindy Exchanges
Author: Samantha Carroll
DOI: 10.1080/10304310600987262
Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year
Published in: journal Continuum, Volume 20, Issue 4 December 2006 , pages 447 - 456

Introduction

"In this paper I consider the social and cultural roles played by Lindy Exchanges in contemporary swing dance culture. I am particularly interested in the significance of Lindy Exchanges as opportunities for members of a geographically distanced and highly mediated community to come together to participate in embodied discourse. As a community of dancers, contemporary Lindy Hoppers are of course particularly concerned with physical interaction. While they dance regularly in their own, local communities, many dancers seek out new, embodied dance experiences through travelling to other local communities, and by encouraging other dancers to visit their city. I am interested in the ways in which Lindy Exchanges serve as the lure which attracts dancers to new scenes, despite the difficulties of travelling vast distances for a single weekend of dancing and embodied interaction. I am also interested in the role that digital media play not only in the everyday activities of dancers in their home cities but also in the development of networks between local communities which provide the social justification for bringing dancers together at Exchanges.

"I see the Lindy Exchange as functioning in much the same way as science fiction fan conventions described by Camille Bacon-Smith (2000), where a community of interest maintained through extensive mediated networks regularly come together in an embodied forum to develop new relationships and reinforce existing bonds between individuals and groups. In discussing and analysing the embodied interactions of a particular community that has developed around a specific cultural practice and form (in this case dance, rather than, for example, a particular television program), I suggest that we can better understand the relationship between mediated and embodied discourse not only within a particular group but also in the wider community."

It's pretty fascinating. I'm tempted to post the WHOLE thing. [Emoticon not found] If you want the pdf version, i can email it to you.

I see the Lindy Exchange as functioning in much the same way as science fiction fan conventions

so true. except we think we're cooler than the trekkies

t_roach:

And they think they're cooler than us. [Emoticon not found]

If by "think they're cooler" you both mean "think they're nerdier".

I think swing dancing and Star Trek fandom are both recognized as legitimate hobbies by the general populace, but that trekkies (and, apparently, swingers) strengthen their group identity by making their hobby out to be less socially acceptable (and hence "more special"[Emoticon not found] than it really is. And to a certain extent, the masses play along. With the trekkies, anyway.

SwingSis:

Somehow the phrasing "dancing and embodied interactions" make it sound like we go for dance and... something more scandalous than dance.

\
Blues?

SwingSis:

I can't get past 'embodied interactions'. What is that supposed to mean? Are there disembodied interactions? Unembodied? Somehow the phrasing "dancing and embodied interactions" make it sound like we go for dance and... something more scandalous than dance.

Foehg:

While following up on it through Google, I ran across the following gem:
Are You Hep to That Jive?: The Fan Culture Surrounding Swing Music

Actually, after reading the article posted by Foehg, I'm thinking that 'embodied interactioins' is a term coined by scholars discussing the interactions that happen at fan conventions. A lot of these people ::gasp:: interact online, anticipate big get-togethers, finally meet each other in-person ('embodied' ?), then rave online about how great it was.

For example:

This year, having just finished my Phd, I've decided I finally have time to work on my own dancing, in the sweaty, embodied sense, rather than the academic or abstract.

Foehg:

So I was on JSTOR on the BYU library website, and I saw this paragraph in an article:

Jackson, Jonathan David. "Improvisation in African-American Vernacular Dancing" Dance Research Journal: Vol. 33, No. 2, Social and Popular Dance, p. 47

The swing-out involves pulling into and away from one's partner to gain momentum as a couple spins counterclockwise around an invisible central axis between them. Generally, this rebounding, pulling into and away from each other occurs in eight beats, with the couple arriving halfway around by the fourth beat and back to the original spatial orientation by the eighth beat. The third, fourth, seventh, and eighth beats are highly subdivided and syncopated and the legs step out (or accent) these syncopations and subdivisions. The follower (generally a woman) heightens this syncopation by twisting the hips to and fro in a counterpoint to the stepping. This twisting of the hips adds a built-in erotic suggestion that is made all the more fascinating because it occurs while the body is being whipped around (sometimes at great speeds) in a whirling motion. The swing-out is the most basic pattern in the Lindy Hop. These actions serve as the foundation for ritualization---for ongoing interaction, be it competitive and/or erotic, between partners. As prefacing and progressive action, respectively, jockeying [from a previous paragraph] and the swing-out renew the social aesthetics of the Lindy Hop and allow dancers multiple points of meaning-making in the action.

...sometimes I think to hard about particular subjects, so I have this gift (called, "takes one to know one"[Emoticon not found] of seeing when others think to hard about a particular subject, and I have to say this person who wrote this disertation is thinking too awefully hard, at least when they wrote it. God bless er' anyways......amazing what language can actually describe if the listener is actually listening.

Sam, the author of the Lindy Binge article, just contacted me on dancehistory.org and she might drop by our forum [Emoticon not found] She's done some work on several other aspects of contemporary swing dance culture...

dogpossum:

If you're interested, I have published a few other articles on swing dance stuff in the past year and have a couple coming up soon - there's one on youtube and swing dancers in an upcoming issue of Convergence (an American cultural studies journal), another in the Dance Research Journal (on research methods for doing cultural studies of dance culture) and one in the Australian journal Media International Australia (that one's on DJing). Those ones could come out this year or next - it's a reeeeeallly slow process.

I'm also working on a couple more (I'm desperately trying to get my publishing record up atm) - one on women, gender and feminism in lindy hop (for the Australia Feminist Media Studies journal) and one on swing dancers and their interest in jazz as popular music (for the journal Popular Music). That second one is going slowly - I'm trying to develop a discussion about swing dancers' use of jazz, and how jazz functions as 'popular music' with this group of (predominantly) young people.

If I were able to switch fields, I would love to do similar research [Emoticon not found]

Dogpossum (AKA Sam) is posting some great stuff on the dancehistory.org forum. Check it out if you like geeky swing talk. Seriously awesome stuff. [Emoticon not found]

um... i'd prob'ly give sommer gentry's opinion on dance theory a bit of weight.

I take back anything less than stellar that I may ever have thought about her swing credentials, but I felt she glossed over some ideas I would have liked to see better developed... outside the scope of the paper, I suppose.

The only actual misrepresentation that I would comfortably denounce was pretty obviously a typo ("left" for "right"[Emoticon not found].

Bonus points for references to military strategy. [Emoticon not found]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4s3X-B2mrI

A lindy hop routine about the chemical interaction of phosducin and transducin beta-gamma.