A Few Minutes with Professor Erica Haskell
November 20th, 2009 |
In late September, junior English major, Jehrod Williams sat down for a chat with visiting Professor Erica Haskell. Haskell is a doctoral candidate at Brown University and is visiting Tougaloo this semester via the Tougaloo-Brown Partnership.
JW: Professor Haskell, tell me what brought you to Tougaloo and what has your experience been like thus far.
Haskell: Wow. I’ve had a really great experience. I think I decided to come to Tougaloo for multiple reasons. First, I’m really interested in getting more teaching experience. I taught at Wheaton College just last semester, the spring semester. I taught a class on the politics of music and I just really enjoy teaching much more than I thought I would. As you know, at research institutions like Brown University, the focus is mostly on one’s research, on one’s scholarship, on publication, so I didn’t get a lot of time to teach. At a small, liberal arts college like Tougaloo, there is more of a mix of research and instruction, allowing me a real opportunity to teach. I saw this opportunity at Tougaloo and I wondered what it would be like to teach here. I wanted to have more connections with students who are minorities in other settings. I’m really interested in the politics, the political history, especially with Civil Rights at Tougaloo and the connection between that and music. And, then, I also have a personal connection to Mississippi: my longtime partner is from Mississippi, so his family is here.
JW: So what are your first impressions of Tougaloo?
Haskell: Well, having only been here for about a month, I can say that the students are wonderfully open and expressive. It’s kind of hard for me to talk about the whole institution; I have one class with about 30 students, so I can talk about them. I believe I have a better rapport with these students than I have had with any of my other students at other institutions. They’re very expressive; they have lots of questions, really share themselves with me. It’s a wonderful experience, a wonderful place to teach music and I’m really enjoying it.
JW: I know your area of specialization is ethnomusicology. Could you briefly explain the discipline?
Haskell: Well, there are many different definitions of ethnomusicology. Some people say that it’s the study of music in society, music as culture. Other say it’s the anthropology of music because many of our methods are borrowed from anthropology. My mentor, Jeff Titon at Brown, says that it’s the study of people making music, so I like that definition. For me, studying ethnomusicology has meant research in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I spent three years consecutively living in Sarajevo and doing dissertation research.
JW: When you say you borrow your methods from anthropology, could you elaborate a bit?
Haskell: I did a lot of interviews (like the one we’re doing now), attended a lot of concerts, gathering information. I did what’s called ethnographic research, participant observation. My topic arose from the situation in Bosnia, the post-war situation in which international organizations are spending money on culture and using culture, and music specifically, as a tool to solve post-war problems, humanitarian issues, political issues, gender issues. International organizations use music as a way of gathering people together, especially those who have ethnic differences and religious differences. My dissertation is kind of a critique of that process and it also, I hope, will impact how these kinds of projects are done in other post-war situations like Iraq or Afghanistan.
JW: How do you feel that music affects our culture?
Haskell: Wow, that’s a huge question! And very difficult to answer briefly... I think that there is a kind of reciprocal relationship between American culture, actually any culture, and its music. I think that many talk about music as being a reflection of a society. For example, on a political level, people who feel that they are experiencing oppression or that they need to fight against something, may turn to music. I think music somehow expresses public sentiment or individual sentiment. And I believe that that relationship goes both ways: music influences change. Musicians can often spur revolution; they can spur movements through what they create. And that music develops a life of its own. There is something very special about singing together, something very special about experiencing the aesthetic level of music. It is a way of communicating both verbally and non-verbally and that is music’s power.
JW: It has been a pleasure chatting with you, Professor Haskell. Thank you very much for your time and what you have brought to Tougaloo College. Take care and best of luck in your future work, Professor Haskell.
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