Marissa J. Moorman
- Assistant Professor, Department of History
- Affiliate, Department of Gender Studies
Education
- Ph.D. at University of Minnesota, 2004
Contact Information
| Ballantine Hall, Rm. 725 |
| (812) 855-5384 |
Background
I am a historian of southern Africa. My research focuses on the intersection between politics and culture, more specifically on that between music and nation, in colonial Angola. At present, I am working on a book that explores how music was a practice in and through which Angolans living under extreme political repression imagined the nation and how the particularities of music and historical moment cast this process of imagining in gendered terms. In other words, I am interested in the ways that cultural practice is productive of politics and not just derivative of it. Much of my evidence comes from interviews with musicians and consumers of music and I explore how memory, experience and pleasure shape politics and history.
Selected Awards
New Frontiers Grant in the Arts and Humanities (2007)
Project on African Expressive Traditions (2005)
Dissertation Fellowship on Social Science and the Arts, Social Science Research Council (2001-02)
Research Interests
- Popular cultural practices and politics
- Gender, sexuality and nation
Courses Recently Taught
- African Popular Culture
- Conflict in Southern Africa
- Politics and Culture in African History
- Gender and Sexuality in African History
Publication Highlights
Books
Intonations: a Social History of Music and Nation, Luanda, Angola, 1945-Recent Days, manuscript under contract with Ohio University Press, New African Histories.
Articles
“Dueling Bands and Good Girls: Gender and Music in Luanda’s musseques, 1961-74.” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, no. 2 (2004): 255-88.
“Putting on a pano and Dancing Like Our Grandparents: Dress and Nation in Late Colonial Luanda,” in Jean Allman, ed., Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 84-103.
“Of Westerns, Women and War: Resituating Angolan Cinema and the Nation.” Research in African Literature 32, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 103-22.