S-s-s-syncopation : Music, Modernity and the Performance of Stammering (ca.1860-1930)

The modern history of disability, and of speech impediments in particular, has largely been written as one of medical discourse and (more recently) of social and cultural imaginations. The pathology of speech appears as an embodied, but ultimately intangible, issue due to the transient nature of sound itself. Once produced, it disappears, and seems to escape memory. In this text, stammering is approached as an object of material history. Drawing on the “paper trail” left by medical experts, popular entertainers and a handful of stammerers’ experiences, this paper examines the ways in which stammering was made material in the nineteenth century. The impediment not only provided (pseudo) medical actors with a lucrative market for various curative objects and practices, but also propelled the (sheet-)music business. Stammerers themselves appear in this story of materialization and market as both agents and objects. The cheap self-cures, medical manuals, sheet music and (later) recordings that were produced not only for, but also by, them, show how easily the impediment was aligned with the modern consumer’s identity and how the persona of the stammerer was, ultimately, lodged in the Western collective memory in very material ways.Peer reviewe

Talking with Europeans:Tales of free speech, democracy, and culture

Het moderne politieke bestel in Europa stelt narratieven over democratie en inclusie centraal. Vooral het vrije woord (free speech) moet ervoor garant staan dat eenieder gehoord kan worden bij politieke besluitvorming.Maar hoewel vrijheid en gelijkheid ideologisch hoog in het vaandel worden gedragen in Europese staten sinds de 18e-19e eeuw, blijkt dat de toegang tot het vrije woord in de praktijk vaak wordt bepaald en beperkt door onuitgesproken culturele normen en verwachtingen. Met name de manier waarop iemand spreekt, kon en kan bepalend zijn voor hoe succesvol politici en burgers deelnemen aan politiek en maatschappelijk debat: niet elke stem wordt even goed of graag gehoord, niet elke toon wordt even ernstig genomen. Deze oratie geeft inzicht in hoe ongelijkheden tussen verschillende stemmen in de politiek in Europa tot stand zijn gekomen, en roept op tot een appreciatie voor dissonantie en meerstemmigheid in debat

Vocal recognition before recording: techniques of vocal documentation, classification and identification in the long nineteenth century

This paper aims to sketch out a cultural history of documenting, classifying and identifying voices in the nineteenth century. Focusing on a period before technologies like the spectogram became widely available, I demonstrate that experts in this period already harboured many of the ideas and ambitions that would later drive the development of technologies in speech recognition and the voiceprint. First, the idea that each human voice was unique – and therefore individual – was thoroughly developed in. Secondly, various embodied techniques for the description, comparison and recognition of particular voices were developed throughout the century, mobilising both the human ear and visual aids. Drawing on insights from the fields of voice studies and sound studies, and based on scientific, pedagogical, and musical expertise formulated and circulated in Britain, France, and Germany in the nineteenth century, the paper teases out the trajectory of these techniques, and changing vocabularies of vocal uniqueness. Central to the idea that voices were “as different from each other as faces”, were cultural assumptions about distinctions between different (European) national, cultural, and gendered voices, making the pre-history of speech recognition a cultural history, as much as it is a history of science or technology

The Sound of Sovereignty : Royal Vocal Strategies in the Victorian House of Lords

Peer reviewe

Voices that Matter? Methods for Historians Attending to the Voices of the Past

How do we thoroughly historicize the voice, or integrate it into our historical research, and how do we account for the mundane daily practices of voice ... the constant talking, humming, murmuring, whispering, and mumbling that went on offstage, in living rooms, debating clubs, business meetings, and on the streets? Work across the humanities has provided us with approaches to deal with aspects of voices, vocality, and their sounds. This article considers how we can mobilize and adapt such interdisciplinary methods for the study of history. It charts out a practical approach to attend to the history of voices-including unmusical ones-before recording, drawing on insights from the fields of sound studies, musicology, and performativity. It suggests ways to"listen anew"to familiar sources as well as less conventional source material. And it insists on a combination of analytical approaches focusing on vocabulary, bodily practice, and the questionable particularity of sound.Peer reviewe

«Acquiring a ‘manly’ tone» : Audible Intersections of Masculinity and Age in the Long Nineteenth Century

Peer reviewe

Puhe - teksti - vatsastapuhuminen

Introduction of a themed issue entitled "'Ventriloquism' as a practice and metaphor".Non peer reviewe

Throwing One’s Voice and Speaking for Others : Performative Vocality and Transcription in the Assemblées of the long nineteenth century

Peer reviewe

Yhtä ja toista Toisten Maalla: havaintoja Kansallismuseon näyttelystä

"Missä sinä kuvittelet olevasi? – Var tror du att du är? – Where do you think you are?" Tämä on keskeinen kysymys Kansallismuseon Toista Maata -näyttelyssä. Näyttely tarjoaa uuden tulkinnan Suomen historiasta keskiajalta aina 1800-luvun alkuun. Tai kenties kyseessä on pikemminkin näkökulma suomalaisten historiaan, tai Suomen asukkaiden historiaan; määrittely jää hiukan avoimeksi. &nbsp