"I will be using the Center for the Humanities Fellowship to complete work on my dissertation, “African American Opera Performers in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” and hopefully defend in Spring 2022. My primary focus is on the careers of several performers and how they blurred roles and genres in order to create spaces in which they would perform. To do so, I’ve also written about operatic repertoire and African American musical historiography. Since my project involves musicology, literature, history, and critical theory, I hope that the interdisciplinary atmosphere of the Center will help develop my research with the depth, care, and rigor which I hope to bring to subjects whom I feel deserve nothing less." - Elena Arredondo Farel
