Rashida K. Braggs | Performing Jazz Research

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | In this presentation, Rashida K. Braggs will explore how embodied performance can be an innovative and insight-prompting research tool that contributes to multiple jazz methodologies, such as ethnography, historiography and literary analysis. Drawing on examples from her own solo performances, Braggs will also facilitate a discussion on the potential dilemmas and opportunities in employing embodied performance as a research tool in music scholarship.

Rashida K. Braggs is Associate Professor in Africana Studies, affiliate faculty in Comparative Literature, and Faculty Fellow of the Davis Center and the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Williams College. Her book Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music and Migration in Post-World War II Paris investigates the migratory experiences of African American jazz musicians in 1946-1963 Paris. In her current manuscript and accompanying performance project “Move Jazz, Black Woman Move,” Dr. Braggs explores how and why black women jazz performers of African descent migrate to and from Paris. Her work has also been published in such journals as The Black Scholar, The Journal of Popular Music, and The James Baldwin Review. In such courses as 13 Ways of Looking at Jazz and Performing Blackness, Dr. Braggs teaches students to explore how performance conveys values, patterns and negotiations of power in society. As a scholar, performer, and writer, Braggs also acts, sings, dances, and writes and performs poetry.