My dissertation proposal is still in development, and I'm not really ready to share too many details in this public forum, but as this remains a collection of resources for my proposal (despite its numerous other functions over its several years life-span), I decided today to link to some of what I'm currently reading.
First: The
South African Gay and Lesbian Archives (GALA) at my undergraduate university's most beautiful library, the William Cullen Library, is absolutely going to be one of my archival sites over this summer, along with the
South African Broadcasting Corporation Sound Archives (the website is very clunky and slow, mainly because it is huge, which is shocking considering the bandwidth issues in SA, but there you have it).
Second:
This horrendous report on homophobic attacks on South African lesbians was released last month by Action Aid. Read it,
sign the petition, and then spend some time, with me, exploring some of the organizations that are working with survivors:
POWA,
the Triangle Project,
Behind the Mask, t
he Human Rights Commission, the
Treatment Action Campaign,
GEMSA, the
Gender Equality Project.
Third: two books.
Defiant Desire edited by Edward Cameron and Mark Gevisser, and
Gender and Sexuality in South African Music edited by Stephanus Muller and Chris Walton.
So what does all of this have to do with South African music? I'm not quite ready to publicly join the dots yet, but come and hear me speak at the
International Council for Traditional Music conference in Durban in July, or if you won't be in SA, at the
10th Feminist Theory and Music Conference in North Carolina in May, you'll get a glimpse at my project in development.