The Soundscape as Feminist Homework
This talk explores ethnographic soundscape production as a form of creative feminist praxis.
Oct 31, 2024 — 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Abstract
This talk explores ethnographic soundscape production as a form of creative feminist praxis. Traditionally, ethnographic knowledge is produced in writing that positions fieldwork as a site that is distinct and different from the ethnographer’s place of home and place of work. And yet, these spaces and places – home, work, the field – come together to shape the ways in which the ethnographer sees the world. Feminist anthropologists and theorists have long called for an integration of ethnography, feminist practice and knowledge production within our academic home disciplines (see for example, Visweswaran “anthropology in reverse” 1994, Bolles 2013, Ahmed 2017). Feminism, homework and fieldwork are not discrete projects, they are one and the same.
A feminist approach to “sound” refuses binary distinctions between the field and home. Leading a feminist life, in home and work, requires thoughtful, embodied listening. This talk presents ethnographic sound rooted in the multifaceted spaces and places through which artists and scholars move. Together, we will consider the potentials of soundscape production as feminist homework.
Nat Nesvaderani PhD.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Université Laval in Québec city, Canada.
Nat Nesvaderani is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Université Laval in Québec city, Canada, where she is the Scientific Director of the new Laboratoire d’anthropologie multimodale (LAM). Her research interests include migration and refugee studies, youth, and humanitarianism in Southwest Asia. Nat is a founding member of the Collective for Multimodal Makers, Publishers, Collaborators, and Teachers (CoMMPCT) and a founding member of EthnoCine, an ethnographic filmmaking collective that pushes the boundaries of documentary film through intersectional feminist practice. Nat received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University, with designated concentrations in Film and Video Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.