I plan to
find a host family that I might live with, who might help me enter some facet
of the community in Paris where I might become more acquainted with
Parisian-French culture. Though I will
do no formal interviews on French culture, I do expect the interactions and
conversations I have to help me better understand the experiences of the expatriates
I am studying. Though I am aware that Parisian
culture has changed in the last 100 years, given the length of time French
culture has been developing, an hundred years will make little difference in
the large scheme of culture, which has its roots in centuries of history.
Furthermore,
I hope to familiarize myself with the city, but particularly the parts of the
city where African-American expatriates lived, worked, and socialized. I hope to visit many areas in Paris with
sufficient history and representation of French culture to help me gather a
larger understanding of what the French value, and by association what many
expatriates would have clung to as their own values. I believe I will find these cultural insets
within museums of art, history, monuments, churches and cathedrals, day-trips
in and directly around Paris to important places.
More
specifically, I also plan to attend some of the most directly related areas
where jazz and blues have been fostered in Paris, attend concerts, revues or
small shows. By making myself available to
these activities, I hope to meet others who share these interests and might be
willing to share their experiences and understanding of Jazz with me.
Informants
I expect my
informants to be musicians and writers of the period I study, and therefore
will be reading and listening a lot, analyzing their work and my understanding
of their work within their historical context.
Though I
don’t want to focus on contemporary Jazz and its modern expression in France, I
will not turn down the opportunity to talk to others about jazz, soul, or
blues, if they should want to. In this
way, I am sure my opinions and understanding will be altered by what is shared
with me, but I do not plan on formal interviews. If one should occur, or I find it necessary
or beneficial, I will be explicit about the work and study I am doing, what
part they play in it, and will most definitely share with them, if given the
chance, the understanding they have helped me gain.
Sampling and
Recruitment
I will
stick to those sources in American and French history and culture, and African-American
music and/or literature. Because my
research focuses in history, few of those ‘sources’ will be living
informants. As such, conversations or
interactions with living informants about these topics will either be informal
and/or consented to.
If
interviews should be necessary or if they occur, I will have consent forms in
French and English to help those informants be aware of my work, how they will
influence it, giving them access to my final piece so they have an opportunity
to be accurately and faithfully represented.
This is not the focus of my research, however, and so I do not expect it
to be a time-intensive or significant part of my overall project.
Description of Method
The
methodology I will be using is primarily an American Studies methodology in
which I will gather sources to help me with all four facets of the methodology:
Textual Interpretation, Archive Building, Institutional Contextualization and
Social Theory. The intention of looking
at all four facets of an event, a place, or an ‘artifact’ is particular to the
American Studies field, as it is interdisciplinary in nature and seeks to regards
facets of American culture more holistically than if one were to look at
American culture through history, sociology, economics, or literary movements
alone.
Textual
Interpretation will be gathered from autobiographies of the musicians and
writers that lived in Paris and recorded their experiences in Paris. It will include music recordings as well, and
may include a close reading of certain areas of the city. I will use theories of space and place to
help me with this type of close reading.
Archive
Building will consist of everything I can get my hands on from an understanding
of the city itself, and its history, African American history, but particularly
the history of music and jazz, and the history of African Americans in Paris
during the 1920s and 1930s. A lot of
this will be history of people and places.
I will glean much of this information from books, but I plan to use the
city itself as a guide, as I visit historical monuments, museums that can share
particular insights on archeology, history, culture (art, music, etc.) and
other influences the city has sustained or inspired.
Institutional
Contextualization will primarily focus on the institution of jazz and its
contextualization within the time period, however once one tries to
contextualize an institution with regards to a particular cultural artifact—i.e.
a song, a painting, a particular building, or a wall of graffiti—its application
differs. As such, my use of this
methodology will change in regards to particular artifacts or places. I hope my understanding of jazz as an
institution, particularly in France will be aided by my attendance to jazz
concerts in Paris and a better understanding of how the French took in Jazz as
their own during and after the 1920s.
Last,
Social Theory plays a big part in American Studies methodologies and the few I
will focus on include race, transnational studies, and urban studies. Again, much of this information will come
from reading, however, I will also try to glean information from the culture of
Paris that I observe as I become familiar and acquainted with the city, and the
cultures that have contributed to its diversity and culture. Much of this social theory, however, will be
taking place within a better understanding of how African Americans were
treated in America and a comparison of how they were treated in France. Since I cannot interview those who
experienced the move from America to France during this time, I will have to
rely more on history and a strong ‘archive’ to supplement my understanding.
edited 3/6/12
edited 3/6/12
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