A tension has long existed between women's bodies and women's voices in culture, in politics, and in media. Women's bodies have been widely displayed as objects of desire or as allegories of various vices and virtues, but their voices, words, and soundmaking have often been muted or marginalized at best, and censored or silenced at worst. If feminism has been about women finding their voices, speaking up, being listened to, and if feminist history has been about telling the stories of the silenced majority, then which spaces of media and forms of communication have women appropriated to express themselves and to make themselves heard?

This is a central question for feminist/media history, but it is one whose specifically sonic dimensions have all too often gone “overlooked” (for want of a more suitably auditory word). Even the critical language we use is colored by the dominance of the visual. Having said...

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