Shame is an ugly feeling. It does not drive us to connect or create. It halts us. It isolates us. It’s hard to produce when slumped and alone. Ethnomusicologists have attended to how shame influences our collaborators. With this 90-minute roundtable, we explore shame as it emerges in fieldwork.

[Contributor 1] examines how shame paralyzed him while in his queer open mic field and prevented him from interviewing important interlocutors. That shame is compounded as he faces the discipline without that crucial information.

[Contributor 2] reflects on experiences of impostor syndrome, a deeply-engrained feeling of not belonging in academia or ethnomusicology. Shame distorts fieldwork and scholarship challenges into personal failures, stymying productive reflection and critical analysis of external factors. Academic institutions benefit from this shame, increasing pressures for service and scholarly productivity while reducing institutional support.

[Contributor 3] considers the relationship between her shame and that of queer Afrikaans music fans who are her research subjects in South Africa. In the wake of a diagnosis of PTSD, , she unpacks how sexual violence shapes legible topics and scholars within ethnomusicology.

[Contributor 4] examines their positionality in relation to physical presences of neo/postcolonial power structures in former French colonies of Africa. They explore complexities of access their positionality as a white femme researcher affords in the afterlife of colonization, while also examining how their presentation precludes connections with some interlocutors. They reflect on balancing ethical research with culturally humble interrogation of the prestige of conducting American-funded fieldwork in postcolonial Africa.