welcomes
Professor LAURA KUNREUTHER
Date: Friday February 11
4-5 p.m.
Classroom Office Building Room 100
800 East 3rd Street
TITLE:
'My Story, My Song': Public Intimacy, Voice, and Writing on FM radio in Nepal
ABSTRACT:
The commercial FM radio was established in 1996 in Nepal, six years
after the reestablishment of democracy, and the media quickly became a
symbol of democratic 'free speech'. The expression of intimate and
personal matters on FM radio broadcasts immediately marked the
commercial radio's distinction from staterun Radio Nepal. This paper
explores expressions of intimacy portrayed on FM radio programs, and
the connection of public intimacy to ideologies of the voice. With a
focus on one program called 'My Story, My Song', I ask how FM
broadcasts of personal and intimate matters relates to political
aspirations of democratic participation and transparency. The answer,
I believe, can be found in exploring the figure of voice that
flourished with democracy and with the establishment of FM radio: that
is, the voice as a metaphor of consciousness, agency, and collective
desire and the voice as a medium of sound that conveys emotion,
immediacy, and presence.
Laura Kunreuther is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bard
College. She has been doing research in Nepal since the early 1990s,
and focuses on the relation between ideologies of the voice, mediation,
and subjectivity, particularly since the democracy movement of 1990.
She is currently finishing her book, Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy
and Mediation in Kathmandu, and has published articles in several
journals, including American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology,
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.
*This lecture series aims to bring to IU junior scholars whose work,
while strongly informed by an ethnographic perspective, also lies at the
intersection of CMCL's three areas (Performance and Ethnography;
Rhetoric and Public Culture; Film and Media Studies.)*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment