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TOPIC: The preservation and interpretation of African and African American jewelry from West Africa (19th century) to the Southern plantation, through Reconstruction, the Great Migration, Black Power movements, and 21st-century museum exhibitions
Gayles’s research will center around conservation research, scientific instrumentation, and technical studies on Black American Material Culture—specifically adornment and jewelry made from found objects, glass, metals, and stones—tracing the historical trajectories of Black Diasporic jewelry and adornment in the Americas from the Before Middle Passage to the present day. Gayles is specifically interested in understanding the materiality and socio-cultural functionality of adornment in the Black Diaspora as tools to showcase individual identity and present cultural mnemonics.