Episode #47 feat. Dr. Ethelene Whitmire
In this episode, Eric sits down with scholar, author & curator Dr. Ethelene Whitmire. They discuss her educational journey, her passion for libraries and working in the library field as a professor of Library Science and getting the resources to the public. How she became attracted to the art field. Being a first generation African American College student to study abroad, having the opportunity of going to England to study Literature… visiting museums that helped her develop an eye for art. Developing an interest in visiting museums… and tracing black art and culture within the art world and art institutions.
How writing a biography about Regina Andrews; a Harlem Renaissance librarian opened her horizons to learning about theatre and the artwork of the time, that then led her to explore African Americans in Denmark — including African American jazz musicians who lived and are buried there. How her love of Danish films and her fascination of African Americans in Denmark led to her to research, publishing some of writing and lecturing on the subject… and how her research has come now to life in an exhibition that she co-curated entitled “Nordic Utopia? : African Americans in the 20th Century” which opened at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, WA that explores the wave of artists who migrated to Denmark to escape segregation and feel freedom as artists… and the realities of their experience of living abroad. How this wonderful work came about, what it hopes to achieve and how it plans to travel across the nation...!
Guest Bio: Born and raised in Passaic, New Jersey and attended Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey for a bachelor’s degree in English and Communication and master’s degree in Library Service. She received a PhD from the University of Michigan – School of Education’s Center for the Study of Higher and Post-secondary Education. Dr. Ethelene Whitmire is currently the Chair and a professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Author of the award-winning book “Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian” (University of Illinois Press, 2014) offers the first full-length study of Andrews' activism and pioneering work with the NYPL. Whitmire's portrait of her sustained efforts to break down barriers reveals Andrews's legacy and places her within the NYPL's larger history.
Using both quantitative and qualitative research methods she investigates the academic library use and the information seeking behavior of undergraduates with a recent focus on students of color. Her research addresses the role of the academic library and its resources and services in the lives of the undergraduate with a focus on the library’s impact on their critical thinking.
Dr. Whitmire received the 2004 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and was a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies during the 2004 – 2005 academic year. She also received the Anna Julia Cooper Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin – Madison prior to my appointment as assistant professor in their School of Library & Information Studies.
Her doctoral studies were funded by the University of Michigan’s Rackham Merit Fellowship. Recipient of the 2002 American Library Association’s (ALA) Carroll Preston Baber Research Award. Her professional library experience includes an appointment as a Librarian-in-Residence at Yale University (1997 – 1999). Recently was awarded a Public Works grant from the from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for the Humanities funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Whitmire was a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Transnational American Studies in 2016-2017. She has received additional fellowships from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Lois Roth Endowment.
Her current book projects are: The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram (Viking) and Searching for Utopia: African Americans in 20th Century Denmark about African Americans who lived, worked, studied and performed in Denmark in the 20th Century. Her writing has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Narratively, and Longreads.
Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century:
Love, adventure, educational opportunities, career advancement, sexual exploration and racism are among the myriad reasons African American artists traveled to Nordic countries during the first half of the 20th century. While some visited to learn and perform, others relocated in search of a vastly different life. Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century, explores this often-overlooked time. Organized by the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, the exhibition is the first comprehensive pan-Nordic show to illuminate the artists’ motivations and experiences abroad.
Nordic Utopia? assembles drawings, paintings, photographs, textiles, film, music and dance to explore the ways in which travel impacted some African Americans’ visual and performance art. New scholarship chronicles the experiences of singers Josephine Baker and Anne Wiggins Brown; jazz tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon; dancer and choreographer Doug Crutchfield; painters Herbert Gentry, William Henry Johnson and Walter H. Williams; multimedia artist and designer Howard Smith and others. The objects on view offer insight into their lives, the social climates in which they worked and the reasons they relocated.
