Proposal: Methodology and Procedures

Entry

            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

Ethics of History

"There are different kinds of love and each, according to the Fitz, is never like the other." - Rachel's ofdeerfolk

Um.  So, I totally found a source on the Ethics of History (not the History of Ethics), and I kind of want to give this some more thought, and also I mentioned today in class that it'd be a good post to write about.  So here goes it.

As indicated by my annotated source for Wednesday, this source has a chapter that outlines the three responsibilities of a historian: 1.) to be "advocates of collective memory and responsible for its order."  2.) to be "responsible for the future insofar as it is a matter of their representation of the past." and 3.) to be "responsible for taking over the heritage of the past," doing "justice to the people of the past and..." coming "to terms with crimes and horrors which belong to this heritage" (Carr 197).

I love this idea.

I wish I were a historian.  Also, history is not dead!  And I like the idea of being an advocate of the collective memory, responsible for its order.  I think that means not only uncovering lost truths, but learning and holding on to known truths so it passes through the ages.  This is why I want to learn about these people who played music and lived in Paris, because their experience was also an American one and I don't want it to be forgotten, but I also don't want it to go unnoticed.  I think there are ethics to not letting history be forgotten.  But I also think there are ethics to being expansive and open-minded about the history that really is, and never making a decision.

"The time to make up your mind about people is never." - The Philadelphia Story

I would add, no matter how long they've been dead, you should always take in new information, ESPECIALLY if it will change the way you see a human being.

But I also look at this history in a very real way as my responsibility to the future.  I like the idea of the past reflecting onto the future.

I think the biggest relationship to ethics, however, is in the 3rd point: being responsible for taking over the heritage of the past, doing justice to the people of the past and coming to terms with crimes and horrors which belong to this heritage.  I believe this is important because it implies staying away from the interpretations of history done by others, and making your own decisions.  It means staying away from the stereotypes or decisions people made about others in the past to interpret history at this time and place.  We do this particularly with the horrors of war where we refuse to teach some of the worst parts of history.  But ethically, it is important not to dredge up old hurts, but to see people in the context of those hurts, and when dealing with history I think its particularly important not to color things in a rainbow of goodness for it is much too hard to understand people, their motivations or their intentions if we forget the trauma they went through or the challenges they faced.  As an example, I think it would be ethically wrong to portray the 20s as a time of great fun, new ideas, liberal lives, and wonderful pervading ideals of equality and love for all men.  Sure we remember the flappers and the speakeasies, the great clothes, and the freedom from tradition and strictures.  But it's important to remember also that there were race riots, horrible acts of violence, overspending and reckless living that led to the Great Depression, the racketeering, the murders, scandals, the breakdown of familial relationships, and the oversimplifying of the issues that pervaded the time period.  I think it is far more ethical to make educated guesses about people living at the time when they are taken in the context of the trauma, "crimes and horrors which belong to [their] heritage."

I think there are incredible ethics to writing and representing and learning history.  I think it means endless reading and research, open-mindedness, and a willingness to take all stories into account as possibly true, while checking sources to confirm it.