Listening, Belonging, and Memory

by Abigail Gardner

Listening, Belonging, and Memory puts connected listening at the center of current debates around whose voices might be listened to, who by, and why. Arguing that listening has to be understood in relation to the self, nation, age, witnessing, and memory, it uses examples from digital storytelling, listening projects, and critical media analysis to highlight connections between listening and power. It centers on voices, stories, and silence, how they interweave, and are activated, maneuvered, reconfigured, and denied. It focuses on the small, microengagements
that crouch within the superstructures of violent border control and the censorious policing of sonic citizenry, identifying cracks in the reshuffling of histories and hierarchies that connected listening affords.

254 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 13, 2023

About the author

She is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Gloucestershire, where her research focuses on music, gender, and ageing. Her work brings together cultural studies, popular music scholarship, feminist inquiry, and questions of memory and belonging.
Her publications include Listening, Belonging and Memory, published by Bloomsbury in 2023, and Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians, published by Routledge in 2019. She is also co editor, with Ros Jennings, of Aging Popular Music across Europe, published by Routledge in 2019, and Rock On: Women, Ageing and Popular Music, published by Ashgate in 2012. Her earlier monograph PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance was published by Ashgate in 2015.
Alongside her research and publishing, she has led three European funded projects focusing on digital storytelling, media literacy, and migration. She is also involved in the AHRC funded project Music for Girls: Feminist Epistemologies of Popular Music. In addition, she serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.