"Fine Discords": Anarranging the Archives of Philippa Schuyler

This essay draws methods from black feminist geography and black girlhood studies to examine the scrapbook archive of Philippa Schuyler, the black pianist and composer known in the 1930s as the "Harlem Prodigy." Philippa's parents, George Schuyler and Josephine Schuyler, collected exhaustive data on Philippa's development, creating an archive that has supported depictions of he Schuylers as proponents of the eugenic theory of "hybrid vigor," and of Philippa as their experiment. Arguing that the scrapbook archive reflects their contradictory rather than straightforward engagement with eugenics, this essay reads against the biographical vector and eugenic explanation the scrapbooks readily supply. Placing the scrapbooks beside George Schuyler's novel Black No More (1931), this essay highlights the Schuylers' shared speculative projects, but argues that Philippa intervened in the future her parents plotted for her. Interpreting Philippa's sonic, poetic, and haptic contributions as anarrangements of the scrapbooks' form and purpose, this essay proposes that Philippa's practices of narrative subversion and self-invention unsettle the scrapbooks and open her life for renewed interpretation and alternative conclusions. Bringing theories of black feminist geography, black radical aesthetics, and black girlhood studies to her archive, this essay centers Philippa Schuyler as the scrapbooks' alternative cartographer.