Sound Studies

The interdisciplinary “studies” that formed on the margins of the traditional disciplines toward the latter part of the twentieth century—American/ethnic studies, cultural studies, film studies, gender/women's studies, performance studies—experienced feminist sound studies interventions as evidenced by Kaja Silverman's pathbreaking work of the late 1980s.¹ Building on Julia Kristeva's writings, Silverman insisted upon an expanded film theory, one that included film sound. Her consideration of female sexual difference and the voice in cinema pushed feminist film theory by creatively wedding the acoustic and the psychoanalytic. A majority of the feminist sound studies interventions of this era were not, however, in film. The pioneering efforts of those working in the 1990s, scholars like Sherrie Tucker, Hazel Carby, and Frances Aparicio, focused their interventions on music: Carby brilliantly challenged the centrality of “race men” in African American uplift through a critique of popular culture; Tucker emphasized the importance of Black women performers...