Grad Studies: Exploring the Physical Archive, Including its Gaps

As the 2024-2025 Phillips Fellow, doctoral candidate Addison Cox is spending a year researching in the University’s Archie Givens Collection of African American Literature. “The six months thus far have been nothing short of instrumental in shaping the trajectory of my research,” reports Cox, whose project “Mapping a Literary Soundscape of Blackness” centers on sound and music in literature. She graciously answered questions via email.

How is your experience of the Givens Collection impacting your research and writing?

There is a vastly different feeling to archival research that has really illuminated the physicality and fluidity of what it is to read literature, research literature, and write about literature, pushing me to step outside of comfortable intellectual and academic boundaries. There comes a point where the only option is to venture down into the caverns—armed with a pen, journal, a vague sense of direction, and a LOT of time and patience—and physically rummage through boxes, shelves, stacks of paper, photographs, newspaper clippings, sketchbooks, and a host of other ephemera in the hopes of emerging in a few hours with a few relevant pieces.

The process of writing became much, much more intense and involved as I started to deal with more and more materials that stretched my own conception of what I considered to be integral parts of the literary canon. I feel that both my research and writing have become, for lack of better words, more porous and malleable. I have learned to relish in slippages and gaps and dive into these places as potential moments of wild intellectual productivity. During this time, I have drafted what I hope to become the first chapter of my dissertation as well as gained some solid footing in the vocabulary, methodology, and history necessary to continuing my research. 

Alongside these developments, however, one of the most important accomplishments from my time in the Givens archive is a newfound connection with the local University of Minnesota and Minneapolis communities. During this fellowship, I have had the privilege of accompanying current Givens Curator (and former Phillips Fellow) Davu Underwood Seru to an outreach event at the UROC Community Center, meeting the newly formed advisory board for the Givens archive, and learning the fascinating history of the Givens archive and its arrival to the University of Minnesota. These moments reminded me of my commitment to intellectual, academic, and personal growth in and as a community, and I will be forever grateful.

Please describe your dissertation in progress. 

My project is focused on the ways in which Blackness—as a political and cultural identity—has been bound up in specific, curated sounds and sonic productions and, more specifically, how this binding has been codified, altered, and used in literature beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and (hopefully) ending in the distant future, particularly as it is envisioned by Afrofuturist authors and songwriters. I look at how Blackness has been prescribed to specific dialects, music, rhythms, genres, etc. in sheet music, novels, and songbooks; how this prescription has informed and been informed by highly politically charged moments in American history by various artists, authors, and musicians; and what these various perceptions of Blackness “do” or could do for the consideration of what it means to “be Black” in cultural and literary consciousnesses.

My interest in this topic spawned from my fascination with the paradox of sound and song in literature: what does it mean to represent sound through an inherently silent medium? How do you “know” what something sounds like while reading it? Who does it benefit for Blackness, in particular, to “sound” a certain way? These are all questions that jump-started this project and that I continuously ask myself as it progresses—questions that I hope to ask myself for many, many years to come.

What have you appreciated most about your studies here at the U?

What I have loved most about my studies at the U are the extraordinary opportunities, such as the Phillips Fellowship, as well as the unwavering support of my cohort, professors, and graduate students further along in the program. I have also been thankful for the opportunities to meet and work with graduate students and faculty members from a wide range of different fields. I am delighted by the chance to learn and grow in and as a community, and I feel that the U has not only supported but encouraged this type of interdisciplinary collaboration and conversation. 

If you are not from Minnesota, what has been your favorite discovery, living here?

I am originally from an extremely small town in Illinois, so I have always been a Midwestern girl through and through, and I have fallen hopelessly in love with the huge amounts of greenery and nature that surround and characterize both campus and Minneapolis. I was very nervous about moving to “the big city,” and I have been delighted to find so much green space. I have never had the chance to live near large bodies of water, and I am always so excited to see the Mississippi, visit a lake, or just be surrounded by the sound of rushing water!