Phi Beta Kappa welcomes visiting scholar Tammy L. Kernodle

Mukta Pillai 

Science Editor 

On Monday, Feb. 24, Wooster’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) welcomed academic Tammy L. Kernodle as a part of PBK’s annual Visiting Scholar program. This lecture was held in Lean Lecture Hall as a collaboration between the music department and the Africana Studies department. 

Missy Schen, director of educational assessment and vice president of Wooster’s chapter of PBK, introduced Kernodle and welcomed her to the stage. 

Kernodle is currently the University Distinguished Professor of Music and the inaugural Park Creative Arts Professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and was the former President of the Society for American Music. As the Phi Beta Kappa 2024-2025 John Updike Memorial Scholar, Kernodle is touring different universities throughout the country and lecturing throughout the year.

“It was a privilege for the College to host Tammy Kernodle, a preeminent scholar of African American music,” said Timothy Freeze, visiting assistant professor of music. “What struck me most was how Dr. Kernodle connected these artists to the longer arc of freedom singing. She powerfully illustrated how these artists expanded the idea of freedom singing to fit this new wave of civil rights activism centered around social justice.” 

Kernodle began her lecture introducing her research on Black vocality and its standardization throughout the course of American history. She highlighted the importance of Black voices during the Civil Rights movements — such as Nina Simone, Fannie Lou Hamer and Roberta Flack — and discussed her personal connection to this topic.

“I was born one year, five months and 24 days after the assassination of MLK,” Kernodle said . “I grew up in the residuals of the movement; my family grew up with it.”  

In her discussion, Kernodle discussed the term “post-racialism” — one that began to circulate in the late 2000s alongside former president Barack Obama’s first campaign. The ideas of post-racialism — the concept of overcoming and leaving racism and racial based prejudices — and popular music have become mythicized with the turn of the century, according to Kernodle. The lecture continued to outline how post-racialist ideas circulated throughout the Obama campaigns and administrations and the white nationalist turning point, with rising cases of police violence in the late 2010s. “The globalization of Black music, the standardization of Black vocal approaches were only [boosted] through music-based reality shows…. And [of course] through White House concerts and inaugural performances” Kernodle says. “Art and music [isn’t] necessarily used for propaganda; but used to advance”.   Kernodle then discussed the Black female voices that advocated for these changes. 

“[I focus on Black women because] male voices are often amplified in these times of movement,” Kernodle said. 

“I was particularly impressed by the intricate way Dr. Kernodle wove the musical interventions of Lauryn Hill, Rhiannon Giddens and Janelle Monae into the long tradition of Black African American women giving voice to protest and working for social justice.” Lee A. McBride III, Frank Halliday Ferris chair of philosophy and Africana studies, said. 

Other attendees of the lecture were also fascinated with the topic and Kernodle’s presentation of it. 

“The lecturer herself was very engaging and the research she presented was very interesting,” Anakha Shah ’27 said. “I enjoyed learning about the case studies she provided of Black women artists creating music in support of racial justice protests and seeing how she presented the history of protest music in general.”  

Some professors also found the lecture relevant to their methodologies and subjects.

“As a teacher, I thought it was really powerful how she linked form and content (with reasons for song styles changing given as everything from record industry pressures to anticipation of tear gas at protests) and how she inscribed recent musical responses to anti-Black violence in broader and longer histories of presidential image-making and the Civil Rights Movement,” Claire Eager, assistant professor of English, said.

Some also felt that this lecture’s topics of justice aligned with multiple on-campus events. 

“I found Dr. Kernodle’s talk insightful and inspiring, and I appreciate learning more about the evolution of protest songs in the long civil rights movement,” said Marianne Wardle, director and curator of the College of Wooster Art Museum. “Her talk perfectly weaves into many of the conversations we’ve been having at the museum this semester with the current exhibition ‘Art is Dangerous: Artists on Inequity and Inequality.’ It is clearer than ever that Black women have been, and continue to be, prophetic voices in the fight against injustice in America.”