Poster Sessions

Description

I am using my positioning as a woman of color, as well as my cultural studies background, to better inform what I exhibit and what I post on Twitter on behalf of the music library where I work. To contest assumptions that relegate Native Americans to the past, my student, who is Native American, and I focused on two current Native American musicians who also do philanthropy. While doing a focused exhibits on marginalized groups or individuals is important, having them in conversation with others in their time period or genre can also provide much needed context. When I did our exhibit on dance crazes, I used a multitude of artists and different time periods. Then I highlighted women and artists of color in my tweets about the exhibit. People may think they do not know any song from a Jamaican Reggae chanteuse, but they know the Electric Slide. Our collection’s constraints, centering maleness and whiteness, does provide challenges. For instance, our collection’s well-known Asian artists mainly perform classical music or are not American so I had to research more rigorously for our exhibit on Asian American artists. My goal is to center marginalized people and illustrate their agency.