Dr Monique Ingalls, Baylor University, USA
Victoria's Room, Music Department, Victoria Rooms, Queen's Road, BS8 1SA
The authors of Transformative Digital Humanities (2020) argue that the Digital Humanities (DH) not only carries the potential to revolutionize research methods, but also to promote causes of self-representation and social justice through ‘reexamination and reconstitution of existing [cultural] canons.’ This paper describes the DH project Nigerian Christian Songs, whose genesis stems from critical examination of one such musical canon: a body of non-Western Christian hymns labeled ‘global song.’ Many North American Christians sing global song in an attempt to identify with co-religionists across geographical distance and cultural difference. Recent critical scholarship has noted, however, that a small number of self-appointed global song curators and publishers exert a disproportionate influence in determining what is included in this repertoire, often reinforcing essentialist stereotypes.
North American universities and theological institutions are often complicit in perpetuating this musical canon of ‘Christian Others’. But how might these institutions instead encourage greater local control of cultural representation, engaging students, religious leaders, and churchgoers in knowledge creation? This presentation provides an alternative model by chronicling the creation of Nigerian Christian Songs. This interactive, multimedia website has been created through an ongoing partnership among doctoral programs in Nigeria and the USA. Through hybrid ethnography and various DH methods, students have constructed a new, open ‘canon’ that showcases the diversity of songs and styles sung in Nigerian churches. The project demonstrates the transformative potential of digital humanities methods combined with decolonial pedagogy: it allows amplification of the voices of marginalized communities in representing and interpreting their own musical traditions, breaks down harmful stereotypes, and provides a useful pedagogical resource for university courses and church musicians.
All welcome.
Dr Ingalls will also be taking part in the 'Black British Music: Sacred and Secular' - Study Day:
Better Than Church? Community Gospel Choirs as Lived Religion in the Contemporary United Kingdom
This lecture will examine the factors that draw British singers together across racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, highlighting the intertwining roles of Black Majority Churches, British popular media, and gospel choir directors. It is geared toward Black popular and religious music researchers in and beyond Bristol.
For more informaiton and registration details please visit the event page here.
Dr Ingalls is visiting Bristol on the 'Next Generation' Visiting Researcher Programme. A short biography and details about the research project she is collaborating on with her host Dr Justin Williams in the Music Department can be viewed on her IRP web profile page here.
Please contact Dr Justin Williams if you would like to get in touch with Dr Ingalls.
For queries about the Bristol 'Next Generation' Visiting Researcher Programme or any other of the IRP funding schemes please contact irp-admin@bristol.ac.uk
