Pop Conference 2016

How bodies resound queerly, how queer voices leave bodies behind altogether by inhabiting other bodies and creating dazzling asymmetries between source, sound, and sex(uality)—from the ethereal as well as irritating murmurs of Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave (Halberstam), to Sia’s ventriloquial automatons, including her dancing child avatar, Maggie Ziegler (Kessler); to the dispassionate, polyamorous disco rapture of Grace Jones’ voice (McMillan); to the breathy, helium seductions of nerdy, androgynous crooners like Green Gartside of Scritti Politti and Michelle Chamuel from NBC’s The Voice (Tongson); to the British dance band Years and Years’ uncanny channeling of Black women’s voices (Nyong’o), we’ll move in and out of bodies in an effort to understand the technologies of queer vocalization.