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Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Awards (WLURAs)

Abstract

In 2016, indie-rock artist Mitski released a music video for her song, “Your Best American Girl.” Mitski Miyawaki, a Japanese American, wrote the song from the perspective of a woman who is unable to have a relationship with her white love interest due to their disparate social positions. The music video engages with the song’s message, adding nuance and complexity through the audiovisual medium. The music video for “Your Best American Girl” chronicles Mitski’s journey towards self-acceptance while critiquing the pervasive whiteness that permeates popular romantic narratives. Through a close textual analysis, this essay aims to analyze the ways in which “Your Best American Girl” both subverts stereotypes and expresses an Asian-American women’s marginalized experience. More specifically, this essay draws attention to white centrality in the indie-rock genre through analytical comparison of “Your Best American Girl” to the videos of artists such as PJ Harvey and Lana Del Rey.

How did you choose your research topic and/or design your research question? (200 words)

As a musician myself, my scholastic pursuits have always revolved around how women musicians engage with identity and representation. I grew up listening to Mitski’s music and have always been fascinated by her use of the music video. In Fall 2023, I took the course MIT 3354: Music Videos, MTV, and the Birth of New Music Media. Based on my experiences, I decided to conduct an analysis of Mitski’s music video, “Your Best American Girl.”

Designing my research question involved a careful reading of song lyrics, music, and music video. As I discovered in class, music videos are a complex audiovisual medium that require a multifaceted analysis. My professor recommended I start with course readings to guide my research question. I read Saul Austerlitz’s book, Money For Nothing. This book provided a comprehensive framework by which I would structure my video analysis. I did a keyword search using the Western Omni database and retrieved an article by Summer Kim Lee. This article provided me with a critical analysis of Mitski’s work through the lens of Asian-American Studies. I continued to collect articles and scan abstracts, eventually landing on the question “How does Mitski’s music video for “Your Best American Girl” express an Asian-American woman’s relationship to pervasive whiteness in Western pop culture?”

How did you find library/archives services and resources for your research topic? (200 words)

Since I already had my primary resource (the music video), secondary sources are what I needed to find for my project. I started with the advanced feature on Western Omni’s Catalogue. I started by searching “Mitski” to see what came up. After that, I tried using some Boolean operators, like “Mitski AND (Music OR Music Video)” as well as “Asian American AND Pop Music AND Representation.” These searches yielded a few helpful articles, which I accessed and downloaded through my Western Library account. From there, I scanned the bibliographies, and located a few more sources through the Western catalogue. A few books were not available from Western, so I requested them for pickup using Interlibrary loans. I also used JSTOR and ProQuest to locate and download articles. One article was only available through University of California Press, so I made an account and downloaded it. I reached out to a Japanese Studies professor at Huron to direct me to more resources for that aspect of my analysis. I met with my professor several times throughout the course of my research, and she provided me with some scholarly sources.

What library/archives services and resources did you use to perform your research? (200 words)

During my USRI position last summer, I attended seminar on “Literature Searching and Information Evaluation,” which taught me how to search efficiently, as well as determine which sources to use and which to discard. I applied this knowledge when conducting my literature search using digital databases. Another PD session with Western Libraries taught me how to use Zotero to manage my references, which I did for this project. In Fall 2023, I worked in Western’s Interlibrary loans department. This familiarized me with the Interlibrary loans process, as well as how to navigate library catalogues. I frequently used Interlibrary loans to locate sources for this project. I also frequently reserved study spaces at Weldon Library, which allowed me to focus on my work, as well as easily contact the front-desk librarians for help when locating physical sources or picking up my digital requests.

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