13th Francis Lee Utley Lecture: James Revell Carr (University of Kentucky) - Accessing the Archives: Folk Music Collections and the Rise of Digital Humanities

Archives
March 11, 2022
4:00PM - 5:30PM
340 18th Ave. Library (Colloquia Space) + Zoom

Date Range
2022-03-11 16:00:00 2022-03-11 17:30:00 13th Francis Lee Utley Lecture: James Revell Carr (University of Kentucky) - Accessing the Archives: Folk Music Collections and the Rise of Digital Humanities Please join us for the 13th Francis Lee Utley Lecture, co-sponsored by the Center for Folklore Studies and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies! This event, as with all the lectures in our annual series, is free and open to the public. Registration link for Zoom attendance: https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAqf-uuqT8iGdSJCl__aUSutWU0xuEoiKPo Registration link for in-person attendance: https://cmrs.osu.edu/events/2021-2022-in-person-rsvp-form  Abstract  Archival work is one of the cornerstones of historical research, and for generations, scholars have spent untold hours in these magical and mysterious places as an academic rite of passage. Over the last two decades, however, the rise of the digital humanities has represented a new approach to the archive. Materials that were once accessible only to those with the status, time, and money to travel to specific research locales are now readily available to scholars and the general public alike. The restrictions and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic era have only made the need for open access to digital archives that much more urgent. In this presentation, Dr. Revell Carr, director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music at the University of Kentucky, will discuss his participation in initiatives to digitize a wide range of rare and fragile materials relevant to scholars in folklore, ethnomusicology, and other disciplines in the arts and humanities, including the English Broadside Ballad Archive and the Cylinder Audio Archive at UC Santa Barbara, the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, and Sounding Spirit, a multi-sited project aimed at digitizing thousands of American sacred songbooks and hymnals. Bio: James Revell Carr, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology and director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American music, studies the importance of travel and commerce in the development of hybrid music and dance cultures. His major interests include sea chanteys, Anglo-American balladry, Hawaiian music, folk music revivals, and improvisational rock. Carr's first book, Hawaiian Music in Motion: Mariners, Missionaries, and Minstrels(University of Illinois Press, 2014), about the musical exchange between American sailors and Hawaiian musicians in the nineteenth century, was a co-recipient of the Society of Ethnomusicology’s Alan P. Merriam Prize for outstanding book in ethnomusicology for 2015. Carr has articles and reviews in the Journal of American Folklore, The Yearbook for Traditional Music, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, The Journal of British Studies, American Historical Review and others. He has also published essays in numerous books about The Grateful Dead and their fans, the Deadheads, which will be the topic of his next book. Before joining University of Kentucky, Dr. Carr was Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he founded the UNCG Old Time Ensemble. Before that he was an Interpretive Specialist Park Ranger at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, an educator at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, and curated major exhibits at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Oregon. He was the music supervisor for the English Broadside Ballad Archive (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/), an online database of seventeenth century print ballads funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he can be heard singing many of the ballads to their historically accurate melodies. Dr. Carr served as the president of the Southeastern and Caribbean Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2010-2011, and is currently the chair of the Historical Ethnomusicology Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology. He presents his work at the conferences of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, the Southwest Popular Culture Association, and the International Council for Traditional Music, and other national and international symposia. The Zoom livestream of this event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact cmrs_gaa@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date. Effective 08/02/2021, students, faculty, staff and visitors to all Ohio State campuses and medical facilities are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. Masks continue to be required outdoors for unvaccinated individuals when they cannot maintain physical distancing. Fully vaccinated people are not required to mask outdoors. 340 18th Ave. Library (Colloquia Space) + Zoom Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies cmrs@osu.edu America/New_York public

Please join us for the 13th Francis Lee Utley Lecture, co-sponsored by the Center for Folklore Studies and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies! This event, as with all the lectures in our annual series, is free and open to the public.

Registration link for Zoom attendance: https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAqf-uuqT8iGdSJCl__aUSutWU0xuEoiKPo

Registration link for in-person attendance: https://cmrs.osu.edu/events/2021-2022-in-person-rsvp-form 


Abstract 

Archival work is one of the cornerstones of historical research, and for generations, scholars have spent untold hours in these magical and mysterious places as an academic rite of passage. Over the last two decades, however, the rise of the digital humanities has represented a new approach to the archive. Materials that were once accessible only to those with the status, time, and money to travel to specific research locales are now readily available to scholars and the general public alike. The restrictions and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic era have only made the need for open access to digital archives that much more urgent. In this presentation, Dr. Revell Carr, director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music at the University of Kentucky, will discuss his participation in initiatives to digitize a wide range of rare and fragile materials relevant to scholars in folklore, ethnomusicology, and other disciplines in the arts and humanities, including the English Broadside Ballad Archive and the Cylinder Audio Archive at UC Santa Barbara, the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, and Sounding Spirit, a multi-sited project aimed at digitizing thousands of American sacred songbooks and hymnals.

Bio: James Revell Carr, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology and director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American music, studies the importance of travel and commerce in the development of hybrid music and dance cultures. His major interests include sea chanteys, Anglo-American balladry, Hawaiian music, folk music revivals, and improvisational rock.

Carr's first book, Hawaiian Music in Motion: Mariners, Missionaries, and Minstrels(University of Illinois Press, 2014), about the musical exchange between American sailors and Hawaiian musicians in the nineteenth century, was a co-recipient of the Society of Ethnomusicology’s Alan P. Merriam Prize for outstanding book in ethnomusicology for 2015. Carr has articles and reviews in the Journal of American FolkloreThe Yearbook for Traditional Music, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime HistoryThe Journal of British StudiesAmerican Historical Review and others. He has also published essays in numerous books about The Grateful Dead and their fans, the Deadheads, which will be the topic of his next book.

Before joining University of Kentucky, Dr. Carr was Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he founded the UNCG Old Time Ensemble. Before that he was an Interpretive Specialist Park Ranger at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, an educator at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, and curated major exhibits at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Oregon. He was the music supervisor for the English Broadside Ballad Archive (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/), an online database of seventeenth century print ballads funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he can be heard singing many of the ballads to their historically accurate melodies. Dr. Carr served as the president of the Southeastern and Caribbean Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2010-2011, and is currently the chair of the Historical Ethnomusicology Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology. He presents his work at the conferences of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, the Southwest Popular Culture Association, and the International Council for Traditional Music, and other national and international symposia.


The Zoom livestream of this event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact cmrs_gaa@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

Effective 08/02/2021, students, faculty, staff and visitors to all Ohio State campuses and medical facilities are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. Masks continue to be required outdoors for unvaccinated individuals when they cannot maintain physical distancing. Fully vaccinated people are not required to mask outdoors.