President's Showcase
Brenna Miller she/her
Supervising Professor: Dr. Sarah Eyerly
Brenna Miller is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Florida State University. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Music in Woodwind Performance and a Bachelor of Arts in Editing, Writing, and Media. Her research focuses on mapping the spatial relationships between musical groups and city geography in the digital humanities. Brenna plans to pursue a Masters and ultimately a Ph.D. in Musicology to continue studying the intersection of community, music, and physical space. She hopes to one day work on public musicology projects to bring research to communities that have a need for these projects.
Abstract
Music tells the story of the human condition and gives historians a glimpse into the past in the space between notes and through the staves on sheet music. Buildings and boundaries do the same by restricting people, and their music, to certain spaces based on characteristics like race, gender, and sexuality. This digital project seeks to understand music as a window to the past and a vehicle to the future by asking what the musical geography of Tallahassee can tell us about the city’s history. By utilizing a variety of research methodologies such as interviews, archival research, and ethnography, this project reflects on the past while also looking toward the future of music in Tallahassee. In addition to fieldwork, this website will present the history of Tallahassee’s diverse musical communities to local audiences through digital storytelling, sound recording, and geospatial mapping. This project will also serve as a database for current and future musicians to preserve the history of the diverse music and folk traditions in Tallahassee. Using Omeka and Neatline, this website will host different maps that contain a variety of resources to tell the stories of different music communities across the city, some going back decades and others going back centuries.
