Clémence Schupp-Maurer, M.A.
Contact information
Institute of Music (» Postal address)
Clémence Schupp-Maurer, M.A.
Curriculum vitae
Clémence Schupp-Maurer is a research assistant at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. Since August 2016, she is in charge of the project “Music History in Popular Music Theater since the 1970s” in the Emmy Noether research group “Music History on Stage: Constructions of the Musical Past in Music Theater”.
Schupp-Maurer completed higher school preparatory classes in 2009, and thereupon started studying Cultural Mediation with a focus on the performing arts at the New Sorbonne University in Paris. From 2011 to 2012, she was an Erasmus student at the University of Bremen. In 2014, she completed her research-based master’s degree in Creative Processes of Contemporary Art with a focus on the practice and education of the performing arts at Charles de Gaulle University in Lille. Her master’s thesis analyzed the representation of women in contemporary stagings of Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss (Représentations des femmes dans les mises en scène contemporaines européennes du Chevalier à la Rose de Richard Strauss). From October 2014 to March 2015, she received a scholarship from the Mariann Steegmann Foundation.
Since August 2016, she has been working on her PhD-project, which examines the representation of historical chansonnières and female jazz singers in popular music theater. Her research interests include the historiography of chanson and jazz, popular music theater, gender and queer studies as well as ethnographic field work and methods of performance analysis.
PhD-project
The Representation of Female Chanson and Jazz Singers in Popular Music Theater since the 1970s: (Re-)production of Music Histories and Gender Concepts
Marlene (premiere: London, 1997), Piaf, je t’aime (premiere: Paris, 1996), M wie Marilyn (premiere: Bielefeld, 2002): Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf, Marilyn Monroe and many other female chanson and jazz singers have been popular characters of musical plays since the 1970s. The participants in the corresponding music theater productions, e.g. authors, singers and audiences, deal with music history. More precisely, they involve themselves with the music, the artistic practices and the biography of historical musicians. How do they experience this engagement with music history? How do they present the historical singers? And in what way are gender concepts processed and questioned through the staging of a historical musician? People rarely talk about Dietrich or Piaf without describing either of them as “seductress”, as “woman-child” or as “career woman”. Postures, gestures and Voices of these musicians, their clothing and make-up, the way they have shaped their lives and their artistic performances; all of the above have an impact on the image that can be seen and heard of them today in various media, including popular music theater.
Using methods from ethnography, theater studies and historical musicology, the PhD project analyses the performances as well as the experiences and perceptions of those involved. The main question of the project os to study how the participants (re-)produce music histories and gender concepts by staging female musicians.