Johnson-Williams, Erin and Meinhart, Michelle (2022) Introduction. Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 26, 68-73. (doi:10.1353/wam.2022.0003).
Abstract
Childbirth, like war, is loud. Writing this introduction in early 2022, with our minds on the intersections between music, sound, and maternity, we cannot help but be affected by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We read daily news reports of women going into labor and giving birth in Soviet-era bunkers and crumbling basements amid the sonic backdrop of missiles, air raid sirens, and the voices and cries of others taking cover.1 A magnified heartbeat through a stethoscope; medical staff giving instructions; a mother's screams; a baby's first cry—these sounds people have experienced worldwide across the centuries, and are imminently associated with cyclical reproduction. As Gavin Steingo notes, "Sound participates in constituting, generating, and producing new entities—including life itself."2 But alongside these reproductive sounds of new life emerging in Ukraine today exist destructive soundscapes that silence maternal experience more broadly.
This record has no associated files available for download.
More information
Identifiers
Catalogue record
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.