Join us for the annual Robert M. Stevenson Lecture, featuring guest speaker Emily Wilbourne. The lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 7th at 4:00 PM in Lani Hall. Wilbourne will present a talk titled Impersonation and the Voice, exploring the complex role of vocal sound in shaping our understanding of personhood.
In Western culture, the voice plays an overdetermined role in the literal and metaphorical representation of personhood. We find our voice, raise our voice, recognize each other by the sounds of our voices, and—through the democratic process—we hear the voice of the people. In this talk, Wilbourne is interested in voices that are misrecognized or misheard: voices that through illness, medical treatment, or training, confound expectations in ways that foreground the sonic materiality of the voice and its relationship to cultural expectations.