Doctoral Colloquium (Music) | Vanessa Blais-Tremblay
The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.
Doctoral Colloquium: Vanessa Blais-Tremblay (UQAM), “Musical Life in 1920s Quebec: Alternative methods for alternative histories”
վٱ:Musical Life in 1920s Quebec: Alternative methods for alternative histories
ٰ:This presentation introduces La Vie Musicale au Québec, a research project that federates a network of scholars working since 2019 to establish the theoretical and methodological foundations for a more inclusive and decompartmentalized history of “musical life” in Quebec during the first half of the 20th century. Co-directed by three 山ǿ-alumni-turned-musicology-professors—Vanessa Blais-Tremblay (UQAM), Laura Risk (U. Toronto-Scarborough) and Sandria P. Bouliane (U. Laval)—VMQ has developed and implemented an innovative primary source sampling process, i.e. the analysis of a maximum number of written, phonographic, iconographic and televisual documents from specific 24-hour periods between 1919 and 1960. Inspired by “annualist” studies, i.e. those that focus on a single year (Brackett 2016), by microhistory (Ginzburg and Poni 1981; Guzzi-Heeb 2016) and by the history of the everyday (de Certeau 2002, 1990; DeNora 2000), this method enabled our research team to generate a database of over 600 musical events over eight 24-hour periods. This presentation will give an overview of the project history and methodology, offer a theoretical framing for the concept of “musical life”, and explore the rich diversity of people, music and practices that animated “ordinary musical life” in 1920s Quebec.
Bio: Vanessa Blais-Tremblay is Professor of Musicology at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She completed her PhD in Musicology at 山ǿ in 2018, where she taught music history courses as well as core courses at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies between 2017 and 2019. She is scientific director of the DIG! Différences et inégalités de genre dans la musique au Québec network, and author of the recently published La "femme-eux-ze" musique québécoise: La recherche sur les genres, les sexualités et autres pratiques non dominantes en musique au Québec (CRILCQ-Université de Montréal, 2023). She has published her research on feminist mobilization in Quebec music in the wake of the #moiaussi movement, on women in Montreal jazz history, on the ethics of care in jazz historiography, and on gender and improvisation in popular music in scientific journals such as Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, Jazz & Culture, Intersections, Recherches féministes and Les Cahiers de la SQRM. She is currently co-editor-in-chief of Women and Music and Les Cahiers de la SQRM.