My work as an editor and other selected writing

Spring 2024

Besides our open call for manuscripts, Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture has two special series that are ongoing.

Militarized Ecologies: Auralities, Incorporations, Terrain

Resonance seeks manuscripts, essays, commentaries and artist’s writings that engage Achille Mbembe’s claim that colonial occupations “manufacture a large reservoir of cultural imaginaries.” (Mbembe 2003). These imaginaries draw from intersecting military, scientific, artistic and experiential modes of producing knowledge. Mindful of Jim Sykes’ criticisms of a tendency in sound studies scholarship to attend to the most spectacular aspects of ‘wartime sound and listening” (Sykes, 2018), we are particularly interested in contributions that describe a decentering of “war”, and perhaps reveal how it is already dispersed through militarized ecologies (Kosek 2010). We seek research and creative expressions that remain mindful of the profoundly uneven asymmetries that mark the workings, experience, spatializations, and life-and-death gradations and permutations of militarized ecologies. How is sound central to these processes? (Ochoa, 2014 & 2006). We do not conceive of “militarized ecologies'' as a thing, as an already constituted field of inquiry or current topic, or as a discrete set of sites and sounds that can be archived, but as an invitation to consider how these auralities and terrains have come to distinguish themselves and in turn prompt proliferating interpretive gestures. What role(s) does aurality play in these contexts and might these powerful “hallucinatory multiplicities” (Arbona) be connected to our experience of sound as a wartime imaginary? Additionally, what are the sonic traces when “the ends of war and the means of war” (Mbembe) collapse into one another? Where do those auralities begin and where do the margins of the terrains reside? We are seeking scholarly and creative approaches that consider how sound, broadly understood, participates in, and challenges these questions. The special series will be guest edited by Mª Edurne Zuazu and Alejandra Bronfman, with assistance by a diverse team of scholars and artists from within the Resonance community

Queer Politics & Positionalities in Sonic Art

Does queer sound exist? Are there modes of queer listening and sonic expression? How might critical queer/trans perspectives on sonic art, extending but not limited to sound sculpture, performance, installation, music, and sound design intervene in the cisgender and heteronormative historical/theoretical narratives and artistic expressions that dominate the field? Resonance seeks scholarly articles, artist essays, interviews, critical reviews, and other forms of writing for a forthcoming special series to consider these questions, and critique the history of sonic art, past and present, from diverse queer/trans methodological and theoretical perspectives.

 Additionally, as sonic art is further institutionalized by landmark exhibits, acquisitions, and commissions, it is vital that we think critically about whose experiences of sound and listening are amplified, and whose are silenced. How might a queering of sound work to understand and subvert the global rise of homophobic, transphobic, white supremacist, ableist, and neocolonial systems of power?

In-depth analyses of sonic artworks, exhibitions, and performances should therefore be deeply contextualized through the experiences and ideas of LGBTQIA2S+ people and their communities. Submissions should critically examine the history and culture of sonic art that enrich our current understanding from numerous queer positionalities. We are especially interested in writings that supplement formal and technical analysis with critical social inquiry. Ideal articles will actively consider how queer sonic art and media mobilize and critique systems of power and embody a politics of listening. The result will be an inclusive and actionable narrative of sonic art that is gleaned from critical queer artistic perspectives, adding to cisgender and heteronormative positions and building towards new phenomenological and epistemological considerations.

The special series will be guest edited by Charles Eppley (they/he), Assistant Teaching Professor of Interdisciplinary Art & Performance at Arizona State University, and Co-Editor and Research Coordinator for the Proclaiming Disability Arts initiative at the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Their work will be assisted by a diverse team of scholars and artists from within the Resonance community. We welcome manuscripts, abstracts, works of sound art and proposals for interviews.

Please email all documents to resonance@ucpress.edu

About the journal:

Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture is an interdisciplinary, international peer reviewed journal that features research and writing of scholars and artists working in fields typically considered to be the domain of sound art and sound studies. These fields may include traditional and new forms of radio, music, performance, installation, sound technologies, immersive realities, and studies-based disciplines such as musicology, philosophy, and cultural studies. The journal also welcomes research and approaches that explore cultural boundaries and expand upon the concept of sound as a living, cultural force whose territories and impacts are still emerging.

Other selected writing and editing