Dr. Alex Blue V, Assistant Professor, College of William & Mary

Wednesday, November 17, 2021 | 3:30-5 pm | Music Library Seminar Room 2406

Alex Blue’s research examines the intersections of race, sound, space and place, with a primary focus on the United States. His work features a Black Studies-centered approach to Ethnomusicology and Sound Studies, employing heavily ethnographic methods to demonstrate ways in which race has influenced sound and sound has influenced race. Additionally, he is interested in narratives of death, dying, and afterlives in relation to African-American music and has published, given talks, and taught classes concerning these narratives.

Currently, Blue is working on two book projects. The first, titled A Matter of Death and Life, is built upon his dissertation, an ethnographic (or “necrographic”) study of the narratives of death and dying and how artists employ various forms of death as praxis in contemporary Detroit hip-hop. The second, which he is co-authoring, is an ethnographic study of country rap, otherwise known as “hick hop,” that examines issues of race, gender, class, nationalism, and identity, primarily (but not entirely) in the southern United States.

Blue will be discussing the ways in which UCSB shaped his career path, his research design, and his current projects.