Spring 2022 Grant Recipient
Piers Gelly (English)
My project, “The Global Voices of Black Mountain College,” will contribute to a narrative podcast series telling the story of Black Mountain College, an experimental liberal arts college that existed from 1933-1957 in rural North Carolina. Despite its brief existence, BMC had an outsize influence on postwar art, music, and pedagogy in the United States and abroad. This project argues, in part, that BMC wouldn’t have been possible without its network of global voices: students, faculty, and staff came from over 20 countries across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Mediterranean. Working in collaboration with the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, I’m developing a narrative podcast project that draws on the considerable tape archives of interviews with Black Mountain College students and faculty. This generous grant from the CGII will support essential research with these archival tapes.