This past week, Avery Noe, a junior double majoring in Musicology and History, was selected to attend the Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference and the Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference to present her research on the lives and legacies of two influential artists: Beauford Delaney and Frédéric Chopin. Notably, Noe was named the winner of the Humanities Division in the Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference, culminating in her research being published in the Stanford Undergraduate Research Association (SURA) journal.

The Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference is a yearly conference run by the Stanford Undergraduate Research Association (SURA). It features poster presentations from undergraduates from all over the world but is highly selective. Only 10 humanities projects are selected every year after a rigorous application process.  

While at Stanford, Noe presented on Beaford Delaney’s time in New York. She used her skills in transcribing archived letters, interviews, and journals to put together, piece by piece, what Delaney was doing in that period. For her research, Noe primarily relied on newspaper databases through UT Libraries while also pulling from a few secondary sources. 

“Because information on Delaney’s time in New York is so scarce, my goal was to fill in gaps in the history, specifically his movement between circles in Harlem and Greenwich Village and eventual move to Paris,” said Noe. 

The following weekend, Avery attended the Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference. Established in 1947, the Harvard Graduate Music Forum is a yearly conference for graduate students and post-doctorates to share and discuss recent research. This year’s conference topic was music criticism, which was also the topic of the first conference in 1947. At Harvard, Noe presented how reviewers between 1840-1999 continued to bring up Chopin’s gender expression. Noe drew from a diverse array of sources, including digital newspaper archives, anthologies, and scholarly databases. 

“I wanted to show how the gender anxiety of a given time was projected onto Chopin after his death and how these reviews influence popular perceptions of the composer today,” said Noe.

On top of all these accomplishments, Noe was the only undergraduate from any institution who presented at the Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference after being personally invited to submit her research abstract. As she continues her academic journey, Avery’s work serves as an inspiration to aspiring scholars, reinforcing the importance of understanding history, culture, and artistic expression.