"A range of contemporary feminist critical writers are discussed: Gloria Anzaldua, Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Jane Flax, Susan Griffin, Donna Haraway, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Elaine Pagels, Adrienne Rich, Eve Sedgwick, Joan Scott, Jane Tompkins, Trinh Minh-ha, and Patricia Williams. Their investment in the oral modulations of words marks not only a provocative engagement with the incommensurability of contemporary theory, but also a turn to the ambiguous and tangled qualities of language - "poetic literacy" - that generate an evocative epistemology."--BOOK JACKET.

In The Sounds of Feminist Theory, Ruth Salvaggio follows a distinctive turn toward the oral and evocative qualities of language in feminist theory. Questioning paradigms of female voice and varied feminist claims to language, she suggests that feminist theorists listen to the ways in which words mean more than they ostensibly signify, the ways in which language and epistemology—like sound—are mobile. She calls this theoretical project "Hearing the O," a process of listening for and seizing those wavering qualities of language that invite changes, often remarkable alterations, in how we think. A range of contemporary feminist critical writers are discussed: Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Jane Flax, Susan Griffin, Donna Haraway, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Elaine Pagels, Adrienne Rich, Eve Sedgwick, Joan Scott, Jane Tompkins, Trinh Minh-ha, and Patricia Williams. Their investment in the oral modulations of words marks not only a provocative engagement with the incommensurability of contemporary theory, but also a turn to the ambiguous and tangled qualities of language—"poetic literacy"—that generate an evocative epistemology.

What does it mean to write in and about sound? How can literature, seemingly a silent, visual medium, be sound-bearing? This volume considers these questions by attending to the energy generated by the sonic in literary studies from the late nineteenth century to the present. Sound, whether understood as noise, music, rhythm, voice or vibration, has long shaped literary cultures and their scholarship. In original chapters written by leading scholars in the field, this book tunes in to the literary text as a site of vocalisation, rhythmics and dissonance, as well as an archive of soundscapes, modes of listening, and sound technologies. Sound and Literature is unique for the breadth and plurality of its approach, and for its interrogation and methodological mapping of the field of literary sound studies.

A sixty-year history of Afro–South Asian musical collaborations From Beyoncé’s South Asian music–inspired Super Bowl Halftime performance, to jazz artists like John and Alice Coltrane’s use of Indian song structures and spirituality in their work, to Jay-Z and Missy Elliott’s high-profile collaborations with diasporic South Asian artists such as the Panjabi MC and MIA, African American musicians have frequently engaged South Asian cultural productions in the development of Black music culture. Sounds from the Other Side traces such engagements through an interdisciplinary analysis of the political implications of African American musicians’ South Asian influence since the 1960s. Elliott H. Powell asks, what happens when we consider Black musicians’ South Asian sonic explorations as distinct from those of their white counterparts? He looks to Black musical genres of jazz, funk, and hip hop and examines the work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Rick James, OutKast, Timbaland, Beyoncé, and others, showing how Afro–South Asian music in the United States is a dynamic, complex, and contradictory cultural site where comparative racialization, transformative gender and queer politics, and coalition politics intertwine. Powell situates this cultural history within larger global and domestic sociohistorical junctures that link African American and South Asian diasporic communities in the United States. The long historical arc of Afro–South Asian music in Sounds from the Other Side interprets such music-making activities as highly political endeavors, offering an essential conversation about cross-cultural musical exchanges between racially marginalized musicians.

At no point in recorded history has there been an absence of intense, and heated, discussion about the subject of how to conduct relations between women and men. This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to these omnipresent issues and debates, mapping the present and future of thinking about feminist theory. The chapters gathered here present the state of the art in scholarship in the field, covering: Epistemology and marginality Literary, visual and cultural representations Sexuality Macro and microeconomics of gender Conflict and peace. The most important consensus in this volume is that a central organizing tenet of feminism is its willingness to examine the ways in which gender and relations between women and men have been (and are) organized. The authors bring a shared commitment to the critical appraisal of gender relations, as well as a recognition that to think ‘theoretically’ is not to detach concerns from lived experience but to extend the possibilities of understanding. With this focus on theory and theorizing about the world in which we live, this Handbook asks us, across all disciplines and situations, to abandon our taken-for-granted assumptions about the world and interrogate both the origin and the implications of our ideas about gender relations and feminism. It is an essential reference work for advanced students and academics not only of feminist theory, but of gender and sexuality across the humanities and social sciences.

Art history traditionally concentrates on the visual, often at the expense of sound art. This book is about recent attempts by artists trained in (West) Germany to provoke listening experiences to awaken the ear. Their work is revolutionary in artistic terms and in what it reveals about human relations, especially concerning issues of gender.

The practices and perception of music creation have evolved with the cultural, social and technological contexts of music and musicians. But musical authorship, in its many technical and aesthetic modes, remains an important component of music culture. Musicians are increasingly called on to share their experience in writing. However, cultural imperatives to account for composition as knowledge production and to make claims for its uniqueness inhibit the development of discourse in both expert and public spheres. Internet pioneer Philip Agre observed a discourse deficit in artificial intelligence research and proposed a critical technical practice, a single disciplinary field with “one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique. … A critical technical practice rethinks its own premises, re-evaluates its own methods, and reconsiders its own concepts as a routine part of its daily work.” This volume considers the potential for critical technical practice in the evolving situation of composition across a wide range of current practices. In seeking to tell more honest, useful stories of composition, it hopes to contribute to a new discourse around the creation of music.