Radio

Radio studies is an inherently feminist endeavor. Radio was long considered too commercial, too personal, too crowded with pop music, too frivolous, too … feminine to be taken very seriously either in academia or in the culture at large. My own introductions to radio studies and feminist radio studies were one and the same. Even before returning to graduate school, I happened upon Michele Hilmes's landmark 1997 study Radio Voices through the serendipity of an Amazon search. As others have noted before me, Hilmes masterfully mixes industrial and cultural history, with a heavy emphasis on gender. In her fifth chapter, “The Disembodied Woman,” she argues that gender is a “central conflict” and formative influence in the evolution of American radio.¹ Feminist radio scholars are still answering her call to tease out the complex relationships between the women who have historically composed the majority of radio's listeners and the medium's...