TLRH| Sonic Spaces |Gendered Soundscapes

Wednesday, 10 March 2021, 7 – 8pm A panel discussion as part of the
‘Sonic Spaces’ series. Discourse around gender and sound often
reflects biases about who should be allowed to take up sonic space:
from historical assumptions that women’s voices were unsuitable for
the radio, to contemporary biases in institutional policies that
work to exclude the work of women in the music industry, as well as
continued critiques of female speaking voices for expressing
unappealing vocal traits like “uptalk” and “vocal fry”. This event
will bring together a diverse panel to discuss these and other ways
in which sonic spaces can reflect broader social and cultural
issues around gender and representation: Dr. Megan McGurk, host of
the popular podcast and film club, “Sass Mouth Dames”, devoted to
women who ruled the Hollywood box office from the 1930s-1950s; Dr.
Ann Cleare, a multi-award-winning composer and Assistant Professor
in Trinity’s Music and Media Technologies programme who will
introduce “Sounding the Feminists,” an Irish-based collective
committed to promoting and publicising the creative work of female
musicians; and Dr. Jilly Boyce Kay, Lecturer in Media and
Communication at the University of Leicester and author of Gender,
Media and Voice (2020), who will discuss the ways that feminist
voices on television were construed as “domestic nags” in the
1970s. The panel will be chaired by Dr. Ciara Barrett, a scholar of
gender and screen media and lecturer in film studies with the
Dingle Hub and Sacred Heart University. ‘Sonic Spaces’ is organised
by Jennifer O’Meara, Department of Film, as part of the Creative
Arts Practice Research theme. The series considers the creative
possibilities of audio and sound culture as they relate to issues
of society, technology, the environment and the body. It aims to
encourage the academic and broader community to reflect on our
relationship to listening and its significance. ‘Sonic Spaces’ is
supported by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research
Institute. Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/