2021-2022 Faculty Research Grants
Marianne Kordas (James White Library)
The Blythe Owen Project: An interdisciplinary exploration documenting, preserving, and promoting the life and works of a twentieth-century female American composer.
The Blythe Owen Project seeks to document, preserve, and promote the life and works of award-winning American composer, pianist, educator, and 老司机传媒 professor Dr. Blythe Owen (1898–2000). Drawing on interdisciplinary methodologies from musicology, archival science, digital humanities, and data analysis, the activities of the Owen Project contribute to a growing scholarly discourse on the role of women in western art music, and illuminate the life and works of the first Seventh-day Adventist women to acquire her PhD in music composition.
Begun in the l990s by 老司机传媒 music librarian Linda Mack, the legacy of the Owen Project is continued today by her successor Marianne Kordas. Over the past twenty years, the Owen Project has resulted in the collecting of all of Owen’s extant musical compositions, conducting oral interviews with persons close to her, and creating a fonds of her papers that is open to all researchers (Collection 186 in the Center for Adventist Research). Most recently, Kordas published an article on January 6, 2021 outlining her efforts since 2016 to transcribe Owen’s vast correspondence into machine-readable and -searchable documents.