Name: Music and Sound Studies Colloquium: Ambre Dromgoole, “American Requiem”?: Beyoncé's Hyper-Sensory Technologies of Feeling
Start: 2024-10-03T16:30:00
Location: Cornell University Department of Music

Cornell University Department of Music

Hailing from Nashville, TN, Ambre Dromgoole is an assistant professor of Africana religions and music in the Africana Studies & Research Center at Cornell University. Her work centers the composition, perception, and projections of Black sacred soundings across different social contexts, the ways that gender is (re)constituted in these spaces, and the artistic innovation that occurs outside the purview of traditionally recognized social, educational, and ecclesial institutions. She received her B.A. in Religion and Musical Studies from Oberlin College and Conservatory in 2015, her M.A. from Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music in 2017, and her PhD from Yale University in 2023. Her current book project There’s a Heaven Somewhere: A Sonic History of Black Womanhood is the first of its kind to document the twentieth century history of itinerant women gospel musicians as a collective, paying particular attention to their musical trainings as girls in Afro- Protestant contexts as well as their formation in the entertainment industry. It asks what the combined lived experiences, sonic performances, and working-class consciousness of missionaries turned gospel blues progenitors can reveal about Black cultural hybridity, legibility, plurality, and music education and practice.