Margaret Jackson
Margaret Jackson, a 2006–07 American Fellow, joined AAUW in March 2008. “I wanted very much to support the organization that has been a strong support to me.” The AAUW fellowship helped Margaret complete her dissertation, which she jokingly notes she might still be writing, had it not been for the chance to dissertate without being tied to a full-time teaching position.
A professionally trained opera singer, Margaret has traveled around the world. She sang in Italy, Germany, and South America before deciding to go back to school. These experiences influenced her interest in studying ethnomusicology. “When I figured out I could peer through the window of music to think about why and how people construct their worlds as they do, I was hooked.”
One of her dearest memories was performing in a musical theater production in Germany when she was fresh out of high school, an experience that allowed her to “learn from some wonderful theater professionals. … They treated a very green 17-year-old girl with kindness and care, and my experiences with them blend now with my memories of hard work, wonderful audiences, and a blossoming affection for Germany.”
In 2000 Margaret returned to Germany and lived in the Turkish quarter of Mannheim. While there, she began thinking about a dissertation topic and planned to devote her energies “to helping others understand migrant aspiration in Germany—the way people with migration histories view themselves within the broader culture and how music helps them relate to their communities.” Margaret’s dissertation, The Poets of Duisburg: Hip-Hop, Risk, and Representation in the Bruckhausen Bunker, focused on children of immigrants who chose to stay in Germany after World War II. These individuals were largely excluded from Germany’s ethnocultural citizenship laws, which forced them to develop “alternative nationalisms to address their social marginality … and identify strongly with themes of masculinity, bravery, and power they co-opted from African American and the broader hip-hop cultures.”
Margaret currently teaches courses in U.S. music history, world music, Western music history, and popular music at Troy University in Alabama. She also coordinates music history for the school. “Music both generates and reflects culture, and I try when possible to embed it within a culture’s political, cosmological, and broader artistic histories.” Margaret also believes that to truly understand music, one must be involved in creating it. “This means participating in world music ensembles and learning from expert practitioners.”
Margaret’s decision to join AAUW stems from a desire to help the many young women at the university who are searching for mentors and guidance from older women. “My hope is that I can initiate more interest among my colleagues for a local AAUW chapter and that we can collectively search for strategies to meet the needs of the female students in our care.”
Overall, Margaret says her goals “are AAUW’s goals: income parity, community engagement, mentorship, and the guidance and success of future generations of young women. I’m excited to be a new member of the organization and look forward to being a part of AAUW’s vision of what can be.”
