Literature and Research Papers

Gender Inequalities in the Music Industry

In my honors course, UH 395: Intro to Grad School Readiness, we were required to write a literature review in our respective fields.

As a woman that is planning on entering the music industry, I found it interesting that women make up a very small percentage of the music industry.

In my research, I wanted to focus on just music production, however, I quickly found out that there was not much research published on just women in music production. Because of this, I had to expand my research to different aspects of the music industry and hows the music industry portrays women to the general public.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed learning from this research and am thankful to have gotten an early understanding of long research projects.

Rhapsody in Blue: Appropriation or Appreciation?

During the spring of 2021, I participated in an Honors by Contract project to receive honors credit for MUS 307: Form and Analysis. With regular meetings and consultations with my professor, I was able to create and write this paper that discusses if Rhapsody in Blue composed by George Gershwin could be seen as cultural appropriation.

While I had done previous research as seen above, this paper was much more complex. Not only did I have to find peer-reviewed academic resources on the music and of the time period it was composed in, but I also had to do music analysis on the piece itself as well as participate in a mock defense that consisted of further explaining my research and my reasonings for including certain information.

Overall, this experience was extremely eye-opening to how other research is done in academia and gave insight into the process of a thesis. It also allowed me to learn that your opinions based on the research that you have completed are necessary, even if they could be seen as inappropriate. I am extremely thankful that I was allowed to participate and contribute to academia, even in a small way.