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Nov 15, 2023
Listening with a Feminist Ear
Soundwork in Bombay Cinema
Summary
Pavitra Sundar's book Listening with a Feminist Ear: Soundwork in Bombay Cinema (U Michigan Press, 2023) is a study of the cultural politics and possibilities of sound in cinema. Eschewing ocularcentric and siloed disciplinary formations, the book takes seriously the radical theoretical and methodological potential of listening. It models a feminist interpretive practice that is not just attuned to how power and privilege are materialized in sound, but that engenders new, counter-hegemonic imaginaries.
Focusing on mainstream Bombay cinema, Sundar identifies singing, listening, and speaking as key sites in which gendered notions of identity and difference take form. Charting new paths through seven decades of film, media, and cultural history, Sundar identifies key shifts in women's playback voices and the Islamicate genre of the qawwali. She also conceptualizes spoken language as sound, and turns up the volume on a capacious, multilingual politics of belonging that scholarly and popular accounts of nation typically render silent. All in all, Listening with a Feminist Ear offers a critical sonic sensibility that reinvigorates debates about the gendering of voice and body in cinema, and the role of sound and media in conjuring community.
Pavitra Sundar is an Associate Professor of Literature at Hamilton College, New York. She writes and teaches about film, literature, and sound, with a focus on South Asia. Her research interests span cinema and media studies, postcolonial literary and cultural studies, sound studies, and women’s and gender studies. Her work appears in journals such as Communication, Culture, and Critique; Jump Cut; Meridians; and South Asian Popular Culture; the Sounding Out! blog; and various anthologies.
Khadeeja Amenda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. @KhadeejaAmenda.
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Khadeeja Amenda
Khadeeja Amenda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. @KhadeejaAmenda.
