Team profile by Annie Koppes, Lou Brown, Tift Merritt, Craig Breaden, Hannah Jacobs, Laura Micham, Lindsay Frankfort and Trisha Santanam

This project centered around empathy and accountability. What began as a focus on Rosetta Reitz evolved into a survey of the lives and musical contributions of 96 artists featured on Rosetta Records, examining how societal, technological and cultural factors shaped their artistic agency. The project’s interdisciplinary structure – including members who specialize in music creation, historical musicology, cultural anthropology, archival and library practices, digital humanities and art history – was key to navigating the complexities of this investigation. 

Within this first year of the project, we made a rigorous survey of the archive which emphasized thorough discovery. We unveiled nuanced insights into the intersectional dimensions of artistic agency while preserving the voices of the women studied. The analysis delved into how race, class, gender and sexuality influenced these women’s experiences within the music industry across more than a century of recording history. The project emphasized the importance of acknowledging historical injustices and disparities that impacted these foremothers of jazz and blues. 

One of the project’s significant achievements was an interactive display at the Bass Connections Showcase (runner-up for “Best Interactive Display”), along with community presentations that fostered engagement and discourse rooted in empathy and care. Despite facing logistical challenges due to remote collaboration and a modest team size, the project thrived in an environment that valued process over product and scholarly humility and growth over certainty and efficiency. 

The research outputs were diverse, including a website, datasets, analytical blog posts, lyrical transcriptions and a team repository. Collaborations with scholars and musicians such as Daphne Brooks, Anthony Kelley and Rissi Palmer enriched project discourse, while engagements with legal scholars and the Sanford School of Public Policy Tech Lab broadened analytical perspectives and ethical considerations. Other projects, including a student-created zine and interactive timeline, underscored the commitment to experimentation with form and creatively amplifying the legacies of the women studied.  

Additionally, the team explored considerations of consent, privacy and sensitivity when working with materials and other practices in ethical archival research. Engaging in discussions with the archival professionals on our team, we learned about theoretical frameworks and practical strategies for interpreting these materials within broader historical and cultural contexts. These interactions facilitated critical reflections on the role of archives in shaping historical narratives and the ethical imperatives of archival research. 

Through these immersive experiences, the team gained a profound appreciation for the complexities of archival work and the importance of approaching archival materials with empathy, diligence and scholarly rigor. The team’s work has already contributed to an improved finding aid and underlying metadata for the collection. Indeed, perhaps one of our key research outcomes as a team has been a much deeper understanding of archival collections as “living,” rather than the static, pre-determined materials many of us imagined. Looking ahead to the next phase of work, the team will develop reparative strategies that further extend into the realms of public policy, archival practices and the music industry.