CfP: Embodying voices: vocal practices, signs and categories

Call for articles for the journal «Genesis. Rivista della Società italiana delle Storiche», XIX/1, 2020 Argument The journal Genesis invites contributions to a themed issue devoted to the materiality of the voice. The study of the voice challenges the oppositions biological/social, nature/ideology, body/culture (Bahar 2002) since human voices result from a combination of both anatomical and socio-cultural factors. The latter induce specific vocal practices that make voices compliant with different norms and ideologies and reflect, among the rest, gender categories (Arnold 2016). Indeed the materiality of human voice plays a considerable part in the binary construction of genders and in the naturalisation of features defined as feminine or masculine. The pitch, tone, pace of a voice inform social judgement (Le Breton 2011) as well as generating gender biases. Indeed the performative quality of the voice complements and even surpasses the impact of words and speech (Schlichter 2011, Cavarero 2005, Butler 1997). Building on the increasing interdisciplinary interest in the history of sound (Gutton 2000, Sterne 2003, Bettini 2018) and in the historical dimension of human voice (Zumthor 1987, Farge 2009), this issue of «Genesis» aims to contribute to the social and cultural history of the voice in a gender perspective and with a focus on its materiality, exploring the processes through which the male and the female voice were constructed and renegotiated from antiquity to the contemporary period. What is the relationship between voice and models of femininity and masculinity? What forms did it take and how did it change over time? In what ways has the voice been used as a means of differentiation and discrimination? Download the complete call for articles in PDF Submission of proposals Abstracts, of unpublished articles, c.400 words long should be submitted to the editors: Nelly Valsangiacomo (nelly.valsangiacomo@unil.ch) and Sandra Cavallo (s.cavallo@rhul.ac.uk), by 9 September 2019 at the latest, in Italian, French, English or Spanish. Please include an indication of the sources employed and key bibliographical references. Do also add a brief biobibliography of the author. Editorial Process Authors will be informed of the outcome of the abstract selection by 30th September 2019. Articles should not be longer than 8000 words including footnotes and should be submitted to the editors by 20 January 2020. A limited number of articles could be submitted and published in English, French or Spanish. The articles will be internally refereed and externally peer reviewed. They will appear in July 2020, in volume XIX, issue 1.