Queer voices, shadow archives: An examination of post-secondary music institutions in the United States

McCarthy, Daniel

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115809 Copy

Description

Title

Queer voices, shadow archives: An examination of post-secondary music institutions in the United States

Author(s)

McCarthy, Daniel

Issue Date

2022-04-14

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

• Freivogel, Elizabeth
• Moussawi, Ghassan

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Freivogel, Elizabeth

Committee Member(s)

• Bashford, Christina
• Yeung, Ann

Department of Study

Music

Discipline

Music

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

A.Mus.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• affect
• diversity
• feminism
• music institutions
• minoritized populations
• queer

Abstract

This project is an examination of post-secondary music institutions, including conservatories, private colleges, and Big Ten research universities, and how their systems and structures intersect with the lives of queer and minoritized music students. Using a mixed-methods approach to research, I employ traditional methods of ethnographic study, including sorting and coding data, as well as methods from queer and feminist studies, such as autoethnography, “warm data,” and alternative approaches to archival practices. This project draws upon scholarship, methods, and theories from affect theory, feminist theory (with particular attention to women of color feminism), and queer theory (with particular attention to queer of color critique). I curate two archives of data for analysis. First, I survey the publicly available materials of twenty-six post-secondary music institutions, including mission and diversity statements, courses, degrees, curriculum guides, performance ensembles, and student clubs and organization. Second, I curate an affective archive of stories and testimonials from queer and minoritized musicians, focusing particularly on acts of racism, sexism / sexual harassment / sexual assault, and individuals who are working class, with disabilities, and/or queer. Placing the two archives in conversation, I argue that the affective archive functions as a shadow archive when viewed alongside its institutional counterpart. Further, I demonstrate the dissonance between institutional systems and the queer and minoritized individuals inhabiting these spaces. In positing a solution, I argue for the role of lingering and storytelling as methods that reject performative institutional responses while recentering the very individuals affected by such systemic violence.

Graduation Semester

2022-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Daniel McCarthy

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