I really enjoyed learning about the Texas Tommy, a vernacular partner dance that preceded and influenced the lindy hop, which Rebecca Strickland describes in her master’s thesis at Florida State University. From her abstract:

The Texas Tommy was one of the first Rag dances to emerge in mainstream America. The dance first appeared in the slums of the port of San Francisco, known as the Barbary Coast, where sailors, prostitutes, and much of the city's black population congregated in the unruly dance halls.... It represented the naughty, seditious, but alluring Barbary Coast in San Francisco, as well as the dangerous wild west. The Texas Tommy became prevalent on the dance floor and grew to be the dance most closely associated with the new Ragtime music. In New York's social scene, the dance's wild, fast, and vigorous movement was particularly seductive to the younger crowd, who ultimately adopted it as a code of rebellion. Having found a national audience, the Texas Tommy left a legacy that ultimately helped initiate and influence the swing dances that followed.

As a San Francisco native, I found this particularly fascinating and relevant to me.

"An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality – The Recognition of the Harlem-Based African-American Jazz Dance Between 1921 and 1943," Harri Heinilä (2016)

This dissertation by Harri Heinilä takes a media studies approach to African-American vernacular dance, examining how the media covered those artforms from the 1920s to the 1940s:

The dissertation discusses how the Harlem-based jazz dance was recognized in the mainstream press, that means in outside of Harlem, non-African-American newspapers and magazines, between 1921 and 1943. The topic was examined by exploring how the Harlem jazz dance was perceived in and outside of Harlem. The Harlem-based jazz dance means jazz and swing music dances like the Lindy Hop, the Charleston, and Tap dance, which were danced and propagated by Harlemites in and outside of Harlem. In addition to the mainstream press, especially African American newspapers, dancers’ interviews, articles about dancers, their memoirs, various studies and various archives, were used for building up the picture of Harlem entertainment both in and outside of Harlem.

“Savoy: Reassessing the Role of the ‘World’s Finest Ballroom in Music and Culture’, 1926-1958,” Alexandre Abdoulaev (2014)

Alexandre Abdoulaev in his PhD dissertation at Boston University provides a very useful overview of incredible legacy of the Savoy Ballroom from its beginnings in the 1920s to its influence on popular culture through the 1950s:

The objective of this dissertation is to examine the cultural, social, and musical contribution made by the Savoy Ballroom to the promotion of African-American culture. The first and second chapters of this dissertation address the historical and cultural context of Harlem and the Savoy proper. The third chapter examines some of the emerging traditions behind the Savoy Ballroom's status as the ""World's Finest Ballroom."" The fourth and fifth chapters address the chronological and technical development of music and jazz dance at the Savoy, with particular attention given to the lasting impact of such advancements as the incorporation of swing feel into jazz. The sixth chapter examines the cultural impact of the Ballroom on contemporary and modern media, particularly print, music, film, and photography. Finally, the seventh chapter examines the Savoy Ballroom's participation in New York's World's Fair exhibition in 1939, and its impact on the worldwide export of Harlem's African-American culture.

“Frame matching and ΔpTed: a framework for teaching Swing and Blues dance partner connection,” Joseph Daniel DeMers (2012)

Joseph DeMers in a paper in the journal Research in Dance Education provides a new framework for understanding and presenting what partner dancers call “dance connection” or “dance frame.” He adopts a much more rigorous approach to unpacking what those terms means, breaking them down into five key factors:

Posture Tone (i.e. muscle tension) Tension (and compression) Energy Direction of Energy

A useful read for dance teachers in particular.