About
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I am currently working on three projects. The first is a music podcast in collaboration with artist and musician Sarah Bachman and folklorist, writer, and SPINSTER co-owner Emily Hilliard called The Female Bob Dylan. Listen on Apple or Spotify Podcasts here, and follow along here. Its tongue-in-cheek name is inspired by the phenomenon of women folk musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries being dubbed, for better or worse (usually worse), “the female Bob Dylan.” This is a podcast about gender and genre, singer-songwriters, the idea of tradition, and what we need to do to find Connie Converse (according to ChatGPT). We hang out, talk a little trash, and reassess the women of the folk scene, using their own words and music to tell their stories. They love us on Bandcamp - maybe you will too....
The second is a series of LPs produced by SPINSTER and Americana Music Productions, renewing and expanding the work of Rosetta Reitz’s legendary feminist record label, Rosetta Records. Over 3 curated LPs, we creatively respond to Rosetta Records’ pioneering compilations of rarely-reissued, hard-to-find early blues and jazz recordings with historical research, original writing, archival images, and new transfers of rare audio in best sound. In this way, we aim to continue the critical unfinished work of Reitz’s life: honoring the genius of under-appreciated Black women blues and jazz musicians from the 1920s-1950s. We are thrilled to welcome conteporary writers, artists, and organizers to engage with this extensive and illuminating archive.
The third, a book called Blues Is My Business: Writings by Victoria Spivey, introduces and anthologizes the prolific and unsung writings of the classic blues singer, pianist, and songwriter, whose career spanned from the vaudeville and club circuits through nightclubs, theaters, film, the church, the biggest record labels of the early 20th century, and eventually the international folk festival circuit and her own record label with her partner Leonard Kunstadt.
I’m also very excited to be working for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings as their Digital Communications & Distribution Specialist. You can listen to playlists that I curate and coordinate here, beginning July 2023: https://folkways.si.edu/playlists
I previously worked as an Emerging Voices Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Brown University in a joint appointment with Brown University Library and the Department of American Studies. In these positions, I developed and instructed interdisciplinary American Studies and Public Humanities courses that used the Hazel V. Carby papers, the Hortense Spillers papers, and the Representations of Blackness in Music of the United States digital collection to produce creative digital archival exhibitions. Among other projects, I processed and created the collection description for the Hazel V. Carby papers and researched anti- and decolonial frameworks for the collaborative research, reference, and mapping database from primary source documents on Indigenous enslavement called Stolen Relations.
For the last few years I’ve appreciated working as a volunteer reference librarian for the Prison Library Support Network. My writing has been published in Slate, Journal of Popular Music Studies, American Quarterly, the Journal of American Folklore, The New York Review of Architecture, The Library of Congress, and more.
I received a PhD in English Literature with a Certificate in American Studies from the University of Virginia. My presentation style has been described as “coolly gleeful” in Greil Marcus’s “Real Life Rock Top 10” column.
The second is a series of LPs produced by SPINSTER and Americana Music Productions, renewing and expanding the work of Rosetta Reitz’s legendary feminist record label, Rosetta Records. Over 3 curated LPs, we creatively respond to Rosetta Records’ pioneering compilations of rarely-reissued, hard-to-find early blues and jazz recordings with historical research, original writing, archival images, and new transfers of rare audio in best sound. In this way, we aim to continue the critical unfinished work of Reitz’s life: honoring the genius of under-appreciated Black women blues and jazz musicians from the 1920s-1950s. We are thrilled to welcome conteporary writers, artists, and organizers to engage with this extensive and illuminating archive.
The third, a book called Blues Is My Business: Writings by Victoria Spivey, introduces and anthologizes the prolific and unsung writings of the classic blues singer, pianist, and songwriter, whose career spanned from the vaudeville and club circuits through nightclubs, theaters, film, the church, the biggest record labels of the early 20th century, and eventually the international folk festival circuit and her own record label with her partner Leonard Kunstadt.
I’m also very excited to be working for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings as their Digital Communications & Distribution Specialist. You can listen to playlists that I curate and coordinate here, beginning July 2023: https://folkways.si.edu/playlists
I previously worked as an Emerging Voices Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Brown University in a joint appointment with Brown University Library and the Department of American Studies. In these positions, I developed and instructed interdisciplinary American Studies and Public Humanities courses that used the Hazel V. Carby papers, the Hortense Spillers papers, and the Representations of Blackness in Music of the United States digital collection to produce creative digital archival exhibitions. Among other projects, I processed and created the collection description for the Hazel V. Carby papers and researched anti- and decolonial frameworks for the collaborative research, reference, and mapping database from primary source documents on Indigenous enslavement called Stolen Relations.
For the last few years I’ve appreciated working as a volunteer reference librarian for the Prison Library Support Network. My writing has been published in Slate, Journal of Popular Music Studies, American Quarterly, the Journal of American Folklore, The New York Review of Architecture, The Library of Congress, and more.
I received a PhD in English Literature with a Certificate in American Studies from the University of Virginia. My presentation style has been described as “coolly gleeful” in Greil Marcus’s “Real Life Rock Top 10” column.