Musicology PhD student Hannah Strong's article, "Expanding the Limits of Protest: Rap and Social Media in the Wake of George Floyd's Death," has been published in the inaugural collection of web-based journal Music & Politics in the Moment. Designed as an excursus to Music & Politics, M&PITM is edited and curated by graduate students in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. The editors describe the journal as having "a particular emphasis on present-day politics; our areas of interest include, but are not limited to, 'the impact of politics on the lives of musicians and musical communities, music as a form of political discourse, the influences of ideology on musical historiography, and pedagogical issues and strategies pertaining to the study of music and politics in the classroom.' ” Issue No. 1: Music and Protest/Demonstration comprises five articles addressing the role of music/sound in contemporary protest, written from perspectives from various areas of music scholarship.
Hannah writes about her contriubtion to the issue, "In this paper, I argue against a binary of protest or inaction; rather, I suggest that protesting can exist in shades of gray. In this analysis, I will build on protest scholarship by Andrea L. Dennis, Rachel Vandagriff, Jozie Nummi et al, and Shana Redmond, specifically in relation to the murder of George Floyd and social media protest. I examine the taxonomy of modes of protest, and the production of meaning in these four songs and, more generally, in the Black Lives Matter movement. Ultimately, this paper examines social media activism, both in its form and function, as a corollary to protest music, theorizing that the limits of protesting sonically can include listeners."