Brigetta Miller, C’89, associate professor of music and director of music education, is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee (Mohican) tribe, and her research interests include Native American women’s music and early childhood music education.
She and two of her students, Allison Lauber, ’05, and Erin Peters, ’06, recently made interactive presentations at the International Colloquium for Vernacular, Hispanic, Historical, American, and Folklore Studies in Puebla, Mexico. Her session, “Native American Lullabies: A Personal Narrative,” included interview excerpts from indigenous women and demonstrated how hearing the melodies, learning of the intimacy between a caregiver and an infant, and exploring music’s relationship to the social life of indigenous people are all critical to understanding the music.
The student presentations, “Slices with a Hmong Knife” by Peters and “Cojunto: The Music of People Living Between Two Cultures” by Lauber, were completed during one of Miller’s methods courses as a way to encourage students to examine music from a different culture.
Finding ways to create community, extending the learning beyond the university, and putting theory into action are the hallmarks of her teaching. In addition to supervising student teachers, she launched a partnership with Appleton hospitals in which her students teach music to newborn babies and their parents. She helps oversee the annual Music Education Retreat at Björklunden, a weekend experience for undergraduates and alumni, and also mentors student scholars in ArtsBridge America, an outreach program that creates university and K-12 school collaborations to introduce interdisciplinary arts instruction in area schools. In June, she was one of the leaders who accompanied 13 Lawrence students on a Freeman Foundation-supported education study tour to Japan that included on-site observations of several schools. She also serves as a board member of the Wisconsin Alliance for Arts Education.
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