The Womxn Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities project nurtures collaborations between UW faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, community members, and scholars of gender, race & sexuality in music and social justice movements. Since 2010, Womxn Who Rock’s has collaboratively organized intentional spaces of belonging through participatory archive, music, and media practices. Equally important, Womxn Who Rock documents and archives the oral histories of those who have created spaces of belonging in partnership with the University of Washington Libraries’ Womxn Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities Oral History Archive.
We bring together musicians, media-makers, performers, artists, scholars, and activists to explore the role of women and popular music in the creation of cultural scenes that anchor social justice movements in the Americas and beyond. This multifaceted endeavor reshapes conventional understandings of music and cultural production by initiating collective methods of research, teaching, and community and scholarly collaboration. We encompass several interwoven components: an annual participant-driven community engagement conference and film festival; project-based coursework at the graduate and undergraduate levels; and an oral history archive that ties the various components together.
The Annual unConference and Film Festival is participant-driven with different themes each year that are centered around issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexuality. Our goal is to expand on “who” counts as women and “what” counts as “rock”. The unConference includes: dialogues about women, music, and social justice scenes; small group sessions; skills-sharing workshops; performances; a community bazaar; children’s activities; a film festival featuring shorts on women in the archive; a keynote session; and an evening open mic and community fandango.
Scholarship, Research, and Mentoring anchor an interdisciplinary Womxn Who Rock curriculum at the University of Washington. These activities provide graduate and undergraduate students with a critical lens, not only to examine cultural production and feminist activism from a scholarly perspective but also to build the skills necessary to generate collaborative multimedia and digital forms of scholarship through feminist decolonizing theoretical frameworks. In addition, each year Womxn Who Rock brings together faculty and community-based scholars from across the U.S. for an intensive one-day mentoring workshop to provide feedback and support to graduate students in different phases of their research projects. An essential component of the Womxn Who Rock project is the recruitment and mentoring of women of color vis-à-vis relationship building. To this end, a primary goal of Womxn Who Rock is to create spaces in which Womxn of Color can recognize and imagine themselves within the academy. We do this through the annual conference as well as by maintaining an active presence in music, social justice, and other participatory community-based scenes. Womxn Who Rock identifies the organic genius of Womxn of Color in these scenes and helps create pathways into the university.
The Women Who Rock Oral History Archive is hosted by the University of Washington Digital Libraries Initiatives. It is a collection of oral histories and other digital artifacts that document the work of women and their allies in the creation of spaces of beloning in cultural and music scenes that anchor social justice movements in the Americas and beyond. The oral history archive fosters the development of participant-driven research, on-line exhibits, curriculum, digital scholarship, and media production. This collection will expand as we continue to conduct more oral histories, generate more programming, and create new media and scholarship in coming years.
Contact us at womenwhorockproject@gmail.com.
WOMxN WHO ROCK COMMUNITY ORGANIZING MEMBERS (CURRENT AND PAST)
Dr. Michelle Habell-Pallan, Dr. Sonnet Retman, Dr. Mako Fitts, Dr. Martha Gonzalez, Dr. Monica de la Torre, Angelica Macklin, Christa Bell, Quetzal Flores, Dr. Noralis Rodriguez, Melanie Hernandez, Carrie Lanza, Iris Viveros, Yesenia Hunter, Lulu Carpenter, Andrea Delgado, Dr. Nicole Robert, Shuxuan Zhou, Brittany Ward, Marrisa Harrison, Gina Alva, Teresita Bazan, Dr. Miriam Bartha.
WOMxN WHO ROCK MENTORS
Dr. Michelle Habell-Pallan, Dr. Sonnet Retman, Dr. Mako Fitts, Dr. Martha Gonzalez, Dr. Ralina Joseph, Dr. Leilani Nishime, Dr. Susan Harewood, Dr. Marisol Berrios-Miranda, Tami Albin, Alice “Bag” Armendariz, Dr. Maylei Blackwell, Dr. Daphne Brooks, Dr. Andreana Clay, Sheila Jackson H., Dr. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Dr. Tiffany Lopez, Dr. Tara McPherson, Dr. Sherrie Tucker, Dr. Deborah Wong, Dr. Judy Tsou, Ann Powers.
UW LIBRARIES DIGITAL INITIATIVES WOMEN WHO ROCK ARCHIVE TEAM
Ann Lally, Anne Graham, Angela Rosette-Tavares, Rinna Rem
WOMEN WHO ROCK COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Ladies First Collective, Washington Hall, Hidmo, De Cajón Project, Seattle Fandango Project, Sistah Sinema, Open Hand Reel, 4Culture, Asian Pacific Islander Women & Family Safety Center, B-Girl Media, Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas, Green Bodies, Seattle Girls’ School Latina Affinity Group, Social HeARTistry Educators (S.H.E.), Uzuri Productions, Zenyu, Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Youth Speaks, Women’s Action Commission, FEEST, and StoryGarden Seattle.
PAST WOMEN WHO ROCK VISITING SCHOLARS, WRITERS, PANELISTS, FILMMAKERS, AND KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Tami Albin, Alice “Bag” Armendariz, Dr. Maylei Blackwell, Dr. Daphne Brooks, Dr. Andreana Clay, Maria Elena Gaitan, Sheila Jackson H., Gretta Harley, Dr. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Dr. Tiffany Lopez, Dr. Tara McPherson, Medusa, Nobuko Miyamoto, Barni Qaasim, Dr. Sherrie Tucker, Dr. Deborah Vargas, Dr. Deborah Wong.
WOMEN WHO ROCK COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS
Breeana Blalock, Onion Carillo, Gabriel Teodros, Kitty Wu, Stephany Hazelrigg, Heidi Jackson, Rahwa H, Kristina Clark, Christa Bell, Gustavo Gonzalez, Brittany Ward, Patty Fong, Fabian Gomez , Deifilia Vasquez, James Kessler, Vivian So, Alison Loerke, Brenda Nunez, Jessica Bravo, Nicolet Uribe, Zenith Morrison-Weiss, Diana Sanchez, Elizabeth Santos, Aldo Sanchez, Jaime Cardenas, Scott Macklin, James Hunter, Max Sizemore, Eduardo Sierra, Diego Adrian Guel, Bogdana M. Manole, Serena Tsang, Jodi Thompson, Suzette Espinosa-Cruz, Yifan Li, Jenifer Miller, Elke Hautala, Benny Tran, Shannon Leigh, Diana Flores, Danny Herrera, Michelle Leal, Mandy Canales, Nicole Masangkay, Shelby Handler, Teresa Wilson-Gunn, Jonathan Cunningham.
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SPONSORS
Simpson Center for the Humanities, Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, American Ethnic Studies, The Graduate School, Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, Diversity Research Institute, Communication Department, MCDM, Convivencia: Convening Community, Women Who Rock Student Collective, and the UW Libraries Digital Initiatives, ASUW, Comparative History of Ideas, Beyond HB 1079, College Assistance Migrant Program, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest.
WOMN WHO ROCK ORAL HISTORY PRODUCTION TEAMS
Many people are involved in producing oral histories for the Women Who Rock: Making Scenes Building Communities Oral History Archive, including graduate and undergraduate students, independent filmmakers, musicians, artists, activists, community organizers, and other allies of the Women Who Rock Community. In addition, the archive will include several special collections of oral hitories that have been donated from related projects. Here is a partial list of people who have conducted oral histories for this project: Monica de la Torre, Kim Carter Munoz, Nicole Robert, Angelica Macklin, alma khasawnih, Noralis Rodriguez, Iris Viveros, Barbie-Danielle DeCarlo, Jessica Cima, Alexis Gottleib, Timothy Green, Carrie Lanza,Kate M. MacCorkle, Elizabeth Penttila, Schuxuan Zhou, Blanca Chavez, Hannah Corpuz, Derek Edamura, Ian Judd, Rebecca Lane, Tamthy Le, Leah Michaels, Caleb Moore, Nancy Nguyen, Ashley Parris, Alexa Polaski, Laura Putkivaara, Sol Rosenberg, Steven Steininger, Rozzlynn Therrien, Christopher C. Tran, Genevieve Watson, Phillip Wilt, Elyse Gordon, Shanoa Skye Pinkham, Dacia Saenz, Ian Schooley, Rebecca Simms, Paulette Thompson, Adriana Vega-Harris, Leslie Albrecht, Julia Gaylord, Elke Hautala, Gina Alva, Audrey Brown, Kaelyn Caldwell, Rachel Crick, Oriana Estrada, Karen Howard, Heide Luong, Melanie Robinson, Kyle Croft, Allison Hamburg, Cameron Quevedo.
Women Who Rock 