Participant Info

First Name
Ellie
Last Name
Armon Azoulay
Country
United Kingdom
State
Affiliation
School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University
Website URL
Keywords
Archives, collections, sound recordings, photography, folk music, race, gender, African American history, oral history, 19th 20th history, slavery, historiography
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

From September 2021, I am a lecturer in modern American history at Newcastle University. I have a PhD in American Studies from the University of Kent, UK. I am currently working on my first book Reclaiming the Lore; African American Music Collectors, Refusal and Anti-Preservationist Possibilities that is based on my doctoral dissertation. This interdisciplinary study examines the field of collecting African American folk music from the end of the 19th century to the mid 20th century. This study challenges the category of the white expert collector who was assumed to be specialised in the culture(s) of the historically disempowered people (who were mostly denied opportunities to inhabit such positions) while enjoying access and accolades. By inverting the racial dynamic in the field of collecting; shifting white collectors to the background and putting African American collectors at the centre, it offers a different mapping of the field of collecting which seeks to decentralise, diversify and decolonise that field. This endeavour is committed to challenging and overturning the power structures behind the commonly held picture of the field predicated on the exclusion of African American performers and collectors.

Recent Publications
Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
North America, United States
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, 20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Art & Architectural History, Libraries & Archives, Literary History, Material Culture, Museums, Pedagogy, Race, Slavery, Women