Speaker: Michèle Duguay
Title: "Reframing Feminist Music Theory: Two Case Studies"
Time and Place: Friday, March 3, 5:00 PM, Nabenhauer Recital Hall (Whalen 4308)
This event is free and open to the public.
Description: In this talk, I discuss a methodology for analyzing “vocal placement,” or the way voices are depicted in a recording. I situate this research within a tradition of feminist music theory, which I understand as characterized by three areas of focus: 1) the expansion of the analytical canon, 2) the analysis of understudied musical parameters, 3) and the foregrounding of issues of identity. I use this framing and methodology to discuss two case studies. The first is a corpus study of vocal placement in musical collaborations across the Billboard charts. I argue that vocal placements in this repertoire construct a sonic gender binary, showing how dichotomous conceptions of gender are reinforced through the technological mediation of the voice. In the second case study, I explore how vocal placement contributes to the formation of white femininity in Taylor Swift’s 2020 album Folklore. Through these case studies, I demonstrate how music analysis is central to understanding how gendered meanings are constructed through the sounds of recorded voices.
Bio: Michèle Duguay (she/her) is Assistant Professor of music theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Her work focuses on vocal performance, virtual space, gendered meanings in popular music, and contemporary piano music. Her research appears in Music Theory Online and Theory and Practice. Duguay earned a doctorate in music theory from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she also completed a Certificate Program in Women’s Studies. Her work has been recognized by the SMT-40 dissertation fellowship from the Society for Music Theory and a doctoral grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. In 2019, she received the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award from the Music Theory Society of New York State (MTSNYS), the Arthur J. Komar Award from Music Theory Midwest (MTMW).