What does it mean to listen through, to, and with one’s body? How might our histories of listening—to music, as to environmental sound—be inscribed upon our skin, minds, and behaviors (Feld 2015)? In this talk, Dr. Ailsa Lipscombe tunes into three embodied encounters drawn from her ethnographic research with the global disability community to consider how sonic experiences are made meaningful by those who listen to them. These audible snapshots span geographies and temporalities; they are discrete events collectively textured by embodied experiences of intersectionality, medicalization, and trauma. Lipscombe centers moments where disjunctures between one’s body and one’s environment produce disorientation (Ahmed 2006; Tuhiwai Smith 1999); when the expectations that organize relational spaces do not account for disabled ways of being, knowing, and doing (Williamson 2019; Smith 2020). Lipscombe offers these ruptures to clarify the ways bodies and environments coalesce in myriad, messy ways. In the moment of encounter between self, space, and sound, she posits that an intersectional aesthetics of listening flourishes. And it is in this moment of encounter that we are invited to reimagine sonic expertise as intersectional, embodied expertise.

Please note that this event will be held in person in HMLT103 and online via Zoom. Registration is required. 

About the speaker: Ailsa Lipscombe (she/her) received her PhD in Music from The University of Chicago. Her research explores intersectional experiences of disability and medicalization, focusing on reimagining listening praxes through embodiment, relationality, and trauma. As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Te Herenga Waka, she is building on her expertise in digital ethnography and the decolonization of research methodologies to explore ethical transformations of Indigenous archiving in Aotearoa.

About the chair: Rebekah Galbraith (they/she) is a writer and scholar based in Aotearoa New Zealand. They hold a PhD in English Literature from Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. Their research interests include queer theory, auto/biographic writing, the Modernist novel, and hybrid literature. Their most recent work on autotheory, queer intimacy, and pregnancy appears in Struggle and Hustle: Trans and Queer Nonfiction Prose, a special issue of Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism. They convene the Rainbow Research Network at Te Herenga Waka. 

This seminar is part of a regular series organised by the Rainbow Research Network at Te Herenga Waka. For more information, or to get involved, please get in touch with us at rainbowresearch@vuw.ac.nz.