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Michelle Bigenho and Henry Stobart, "Heritage Fever: Law and Cultural Politics in a Decolonizing State" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The early twenty-first century ushered in a period of change in Bolivia. The country welcomed its first Indigenous president, a new constitution, and a profusion of laws that recognized individual music and dance expressions as intangible cultural heritage. Using cultural heritage lawmaking as a window through which to view the de-centered workings of the Indigenous-focused Plurinational Bolivian…
Stacey Copeland, "Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
Stacey Copeland, Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage and Identity at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, joins Jana Byars to talk about Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork (University of Michigan Press, 2026) delves into lesbian radio history and its evolution into queer feminist podcasting today, exploring the politics,…
Carola E. Lorea, "Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal" (Wesleyan UP, 2026)
Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal (Wesleyan University Press, 2026) brings together insights from religion, anthropology, sound, and migration studies to explore the sonic traces of untouchability and forced migration across the Bay of Bengal. Based on an immersive, multi-sited ethnography with Matua devotees—a low-caste, Bengali-speaking Dalit religious…
Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment. Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and…
Ginger Dellenbaugh, "Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
More than 40 years after her death, the legend of Maria Callas, "La Divina Assoluta," remains unsurpassed. Much has been written about her sensational opera career and fraught private life, from her definitive mastery of iconic opera roles to her love affairs and tantrums. The prototype for the 20th century celebrity diva, Callas emblematizes the cliche of tormented talent - genius in the ring…
Since its invention more than 150 years ago, the microphone transformed the world in an instant. Yet its evolution and integration into our daily lives has been comparatively gradual – so gradual, crucially, that it is easy to forget just how much we take it for granted. As explored in Microphone (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Ralph Jones, every phone has a microphone. Every laptop has a microphone. We are…
Petal Kimberly Samuel, "The Quiet Zone: Caribbean Expressive Cultures and the Feminist Aesthetics of Disturbance" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
A serene beach. The classroom of an elite private school. The still nights in an upscale residential neighborhood. An acclaimed poet with a quiet, dignified mode of address. The sonic etiquette and experience of quiet is integral to each of these scenes. The Quiet Zone : Caribbean Expressive Cultures and the Feminist Aesthetics of Disturbance (Rutgers UP, 2026) examines what the emergence of quiet…
The YIVO Sound Archive houses over 20,000 recordings (including 78, 45, and 33rpm discs, open-reel and cassette tapes, piano rolls, and compact discs and other digital formats) as well as various artifacts related to sound recordings. It is is one of the most extensive and frequently consulted Jewish music collections in the world, embracing Yiddish and Hebrew folk, pop and theater music,…
Mariam Goshadze, "The Noise Silence Makes: Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars" (Duke UP, 2025)
In The Noise Silence Makes: Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars (Duke UP, 2025) Mariam Goshadze traces the history of noise regulation in Accra, Ghana, showing how the 1990s and 2000s conflicts between the Ga people and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches during the annual city-wide ban on drumming illuminates the inner workings of Ghanaian secularity and the importance of "traditional religions" to…
The World According to Sound: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett on Audio Art, Wonder, and Humanistic Reasoning
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and special guest host, Melanie Kiechle (Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech), chat with radio producers Chris Hoff and and Sam Harnett about their sound production project, The World According to Sound. Hoff and Harnett came to Virginia Tech to put on their octophonic sound show, Ways of Knowing. We recorded this special livestream edition of Peoples &…
