Jennifer A. Woodruff, Musicology
Dissertation: Learning to Listen, Learning to Be: African-American Girls and Hip Hop in Durham, NC (Louise Meintjes, Chair)
| Office Location: | 207 Franklin Center |
| Office Phone: | 919-668-5236 |
| Email Address: |   |
Typical Courses Taught:
- Music 20S, Dude Sounds Like a Lady: Voice and Identity Formation
- Office Hours:
- Weekday afternoons when I don't feel like working at home
- Education:
Advance to Candidacy Duke University 2005 MA Duke University 2005 BMus (summa cum laude) Converse College 2001
- Specialties:
-
Ethnomusicology
Performance
Voice
- Research Interests: girls, hip hop, race, gender, sexuality, morality, discipline, singing, dancing
My research documents African-American girls’ musical practices at a Boys and Girls’ Club in Durham, NC. These girls are the audience most implicated in hip hop’s celebration of black hypermasculinity and hypersexuality, yet they are ignored by artists and media conglomerates. As girls hone their listening skills, they reconcile the contradictions between behavior glorified by hip hop and the model presented to them by their mentors. In learning how to listen girls learn how to become black women. I consider how individual interactions with mass-mediated music teach girls a black musical aesthetic that allows them to relate to their peers and mentors, and how these interactions highlight the creativity with which they begin to negotiate sexual and racial politics on the margins of society.
- Keywords:
- hip hop • dancing • girls • blackness • sexuality • morality • education • listening • Boys and Girls Clubs
- Recent Publications
- J.A. Woodruff, Review of "The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double Dutch to Hip Hop" by Kyra Gaunt, Ethnomusicology, vol. 51 no. 2 (2007), pp. 347-49
- Selected Solo Performances
- Solo Performances, April 22, 2006, Duke University
- Selected Performances
- Guys and Dolls (Sarah Brown), April 05, 2007 - April 15, 2007, Reynolds Theatre, Duke University [htm]
- Selected Chamber Music Performances
- Encounters with Music of Our Time, 2003, Duke University
- Selected Conferences
- "'I was like...': Girls reframing hip hop identity politics through movement, gesture and melodic reference", 2008, Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting, Middletown, CT
- Girl, you nasty!: Policing the Boundaries of Inappropriate Dancing and Immoral Character, March, 2008, MACSEM, New York, NY
- "Wait til the Beat Drops:" Listening Lessons Among African-American Girls in Durham, NC, October 26, 2007, Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting, Columbus, OH [pdf]
- “‘Have you heard, have you heard?’: Sound, Sexuality, and Missy Elliott’s Public Body, September 15, 2005, Art of Record Production, London [index.php]
- Missy Elliott, Timbaland and the Meaning of Timbre, September 11, 2004, South Central Graduate Music Consortium, Durham, NC
- Selected Grant Support
- Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
- American Fellow (declined), American Assoc. of Univ. Women Educational Found..
- Kenan Institute for Ethics Colloquium Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics.
- Franklin Humanities Institute Dissertation Working Group, Franklin Humanities Institute.
- Duke Summer Fellowship, Duke University.