Go to → Daphne A. Brooks

The Pembroke Center presents “‘Sort of Like an Archaeologist’: Exploring the Archive of a Blues Music Feminist,” a lecture by Daphne A. Brooks that explores how the papers of Rosetta Reitz document a rare and striking example of a white feminist intellectual ally invested in Black women’s triumphs in popular music culture. Brooks is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Music at Yale University, and she focuses on the archive of Reitz, who was a blues record label entrepreneur, record collector, public historian and music critic. The Rosetta Reitz Papers, which are held at Duke University, amount to a treasure trove of materials that document Reitz’ lifelong aims to develop a rigorous and dynamic form of Black feminist criticism about popular music culture. Daphne A. Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Music at Yale University. She is the author of two books: “Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910,” winner of The Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship on African American Performance from ASTR, and “Jeff Buckley’s Grace.” Brooks is currently working on a three-volume study of Black women and popular music culture entitled “Subterranean Blues: Black Women Sound Modernity.” The first volume in the trilogy, “Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound,” is due to be published by Harvard University Press in February 2021. Brooks is also the author of the liner notes for “The Complete Tammi Terrell” (Universal A&R, 2010) and “Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia” (Sony, 2011), each of which has won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music writing, and her liner notes essay for Prince’s “Sign O’ The Times” deluxe box set was published in fall of 2020. She is the co-founder and co-director of Yale University’s Black Sound & the Archive Working Group, a 320 York Humanities Initiative, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, Pitchfork.com and other outlets.