SO! Amplifies: The Women in L.A. Punk Archive


Image of Alice Bag used with her permission (thank you!)
For full intro and part one of the series click here. For part two, click here.
Our Punk Sound series implicitly argues that sound studies methodologies are better suited to understanding how punk works sonically than existing journalistic and academic conversations about musical genre, chord progressions, and/or genealogies of bands. Alexandra Vasquez’s sound-oriented work on Cuban music, for example, in Listening in Detail (2014) opens up necessary conversations about the “flashes, moments, sounds” in music that bear its meanings and its colonial, raced, classed, and gendered histories in material ways people can hear and feel. While retaining the specificity of Vasquez’s argument and the specific sonic archive bringing it forth, we too insist on “an ethical and intellectual obligation to the question: what do the musicians sound like” (12) and how do folks identifying with and through these musical sounds hear them?
In this series, we invite you to amplify varied historicized “details” of punk sound–its chunk-chunk-chunk skapunk riffs, screams, growls, group chants, driving rhythms, honking saxophones–hearing/feeling/touching these sounds in richly varied locations, times, places, and perspectives: as a pulsing bead of condensation dripping down the wall of The Smell in Downtown LA (#savethesmell), a drummer making her own time on tour, a drunk sitting too near the amp at a backyard party, a queer teenager in their bedroom being yelled at to “turn it down” and “act like a lady[or a man]”. . .and on and on. Today’s entry is done in conjunction with our SO! Amplifies series. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig. Today we round out our series on punk by diving into Alice Bag’s archive of interviews with women in the L.A. punk scene.
SOUND!
–Aaron SO! (Sounding Out!) + Jenny SO! (Sounding Out!)
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Alice Bag’s Women in L.A. Punk Archives is a treasure trove of interviews that she has conducted with women in the L.A. punk scene. Today we share with you some of the most insightful and exciting gems we curated from her amazing archive. We encourage you to hear punk in a new way, and to explore her archive for yourself.
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Joanna Spock Dean of Backstage Pass
[Excerpt from an interview on March, 2006]
Alice Bag: What was/is your contribution to the punk community?
Joanna Spock Dean: I was the ONLY bass player in Backstage Pass (since we had more rotating members than any other band!), and one of the singer/songwriters. I always felt that Backstage Pass was one of the first bands to come out of the Punk Scene (which we loved, of course), and move into the poppier “New Wave” scene, and others were able to do the same thing. We also were unapologetic groupies, and I think the fact that that was a big part of us, and that we were proud of it, added to the band.
AB: Do you have any funny or interesting stories to share?
Joanna Spock Dean: I [do] remember one. We were in San Francisco @ The Mabuhay, maybe opening for Devo, so it was a 2 night thing. The first night, I remember walking into the bathroom, and finding some girl harassing Genny and Marina, and I told her to leave them alone. (I was always the ‘leader’ in that way.) The second night, the same girl comes up to the stage, and starts screaming and throwing popcorn at me as we’re onstage – hey, she probably just thought it was a ‘punk’ thing to do. Well, I exploded. I threw off my bass, jumped off the stage and started pummeling her – I heard that Rod came flying over the top of his drum kit to pull me off. I do remember that as I’m swinging away, she’s yelling “I changed my mind, I changed my mind, I love your band, I love your band!”
Penelope Houston of The Avengers
[Excerpt from an interview on June 2007]
AB:What was/is your contribution to the punk community?
Penelope Houston: As singer/lyricist of the Avengers in the late 70’s and now again leading the band to play all over the world.
PH: What was the role of women in the early punk scene?
Penelope Houston: It seems like there was more freedom and fewer rules in 1977-79, before hardcore took over the mantle of punk. The early scene embraced all comers, be they female, gay, non-white or even older. There was no dress code. Women were pioneers along with everyone else involved. I noticed no separation. I knew women who were musicians, bookers, managers, photographers, visual artists, film makers, journalists, label owners… etc.
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Heather Valiant Ferguson, scenemaker, style breaker and hairdresser
[Excerpt from an interview on November 2009]
AB:What was/is your contribution to the punk community?
Heather Valiant Ferguson: My name is Heather Ferguson. I now go by the first name Valiant. I became a hairdresser at age 18 and went to San Francisco to work for Vidal Sassoon. I did a lot of free hair for a lot of fellow punks, including The Avengers, The Cramps, The Ramones, Belinda C., The Dils, etc.
AB: Which artist, band concert and/or show had the most impact on your life?
Heather Valiant Ferguson: I lived in Pacific Heights on Broadway and Laguna. It was around 1974-75. The punk rock scene was making its way over the waves from Britain through Sassoon’s. At the very place in time that punk rock came streaming into consciousness, I was hanging around with some very dark and edgy people like myself. We used to go to a place in North Beach and I would smoke Black Sobranie cigarettes in a short black cigarette holder. I wore black clothing and Hats with veils. I was dating a musician lead singer named Bobby Death. He kept crooning on about this band from New York called ‘THE RAMONES’. One night he got tickets to their SF debut at a place called the Savoy Tivoli. Well, he disappeared somewhere, but I didn’t care…..WOW, who were these brilliant moptops?? Beat on the brat, with a baseball bat, Oh yeah, yeah, oohh oohhh. I was in my version of Nirvana. I felt something growing inside me and it wasn’t a baby. It was life alright, but they just knocked me out. Bobby appeared near the end to tell me that he had invited them over to my apartment for champagne and coke……WOW again. We stayed up all night long telling each other all our stories. That was too kewl for words. So that show was me plugging into me, plugging into the whole synchronistic punk scene. I moved to Hollywood a year later to work at Sassoon’s there.
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Connie Clarksville, a Blackette with Black Randy & The Metro Squad
[Excerpt from an interview on January 2008]
AB: What was/is your contribution to the punk community?
Connie Clarksville: When I moved to Hollywood from Orange County in 1972, I moved into the Canterbury Apartments. Back then it was full of drag queens and pimps and gays. I was a Bowie fan and liked the array of different people. After (the era of) Glitter, Rodney Bingenheimer’s (English Disco), The Real Don Steele Show, The Rainbow, disco and hanging out on Sunset, I went to a show at Larchmont Hall one Saturday afternoon. There was a show at the Whiskey where I met Bruce (Moreland) who would become Bruce Barf (of the Weirdos) later. He told me how this guy named Brendan Mullen was wanting to open a place where we could hang out and bands would play in the basement of the Pussycat Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. He took me over to this mess of a basement where I met Brendan. I loved his accent and had a crush on him rite away. He said he’s naming this mess “the Masque.” I loved the idea and wanted to do something to help so I hauled trash out of the basement. There was a small, cut-out room in the middle, so when bands started playing and people started showing up, I decided to ask Brendan if I could sell sodas. He said, “sure, Clarksville.” Nobody had ever called me that before, so I got used to the name. Brendan was really the only person who called me that.
Soon after, I met this girl named Sheila (Edwards) and we needed a place to stay. I was going to beauty school and had a little money and with her half (of the rent), I suggested the Canterbury. It was close to school and the Masque. Soon after, many bands moved in: The Bags, Nicky Beat from the Weirdos, The Germs, Geza X lived across the hall… so, so many to list.
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Debbie Dub, scenemaker, producer, management and booking
[Excerpt from an interview on July 2011]
AB: What was/is your contribution to the punk community?
Debbie Dub: In the early days, I think just being part of the scene was a huge contribution. There weren’t very many of us, and we were just making it up as we went along – which means I helped create it! Producing the first Negative Trend single is one of my lasting contributions. The record is famous now but we couldn’t give them away at the time.
AB: Are there any punk women from the early scene that you feel have not been adequately recognized?
Debbie Dub: All of them. I don’t think you can underestimate the impact that women had on the scene. We were equals in standing but also in numbers. When you think about it, for a phenomenon filled with such over the top aggressive music and attitude, it’s amazing how many women played vital roles in shaping the scene. I don’t think there had ever been anything like it before in terms of women’s participation.
Read More in the Women in L.A. Punk Archives
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All text and images reproduced with the permission of Alice Bag. The featured image is of the Bags Live at the Mabuhay Gardens, January 1978.
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Alice Bag is a punk rock singer, musician, author, educator and feminist archivist. Alice was lead singer and co-founder of The Bags, one of the first wave of punk bands to form in the mid-1970’s in Los Angeles, CA.
Her first book, Violence Girl, East LA Rage to Hollywood Stage is the story of her upbringing in East LA, her eventual migration to Hollywood and the euphoria and aftermath of the first punk wave. Violence Girl reveals how domestic abuse fueled her desire for female empowerment and sheds a new perspective on the origin of hardcore, a style most often associated with white suburban males.
An outspoken activist, feminist and a self-proclaimed troublemaker, Alice has remained active in music since the late 1970’s and published her second book, Pipe Bomb for the Soul in 2015. The ongoing influence of Alice’s style can be seen in the traveling Smithsonian exhibition, American Sabor. She has been profiled by PBS, AARP and has been an invited speaker at colleges including Stanford, Wellesley and USC. Her memoir, Violence Girl, is now required reading in gender and musicology courses throughout the country.
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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:
SO! Amplifies: Ian Rawes and the London Sound Survey–Ian Rawes
SO! Amplifies: Cities and Memory–Stuart Fowkes
SO! Amplifies: #hearmyhome and the Soundscapes of the Everyday–Cassie J. Brownell and Jon M. Wargo
Audiotactility & the Medieval Soundscape of Parchment


series co-editors Dorothy Kim and Christopher Roman
Each of the essays in our “Medieval Sound” forum focuses on sound as it, according to Steve Goodman’s essay “The Ontology of Vibrational Force,” in The Sound Studies Reader, “comes to the rescue of thought rather than the inverse, forcing it to vibrate, loosening up its organized or petrified body (70). These investigations into medieval sound lend themselves to a variety of presentation methods loosening up the “petrified body” of academic presentation. Each essay challenges concepts of how to hear the Middle Ages and how the sounds of the Middle Ages continue to echo in our own soundscapes.
Read all the previous posts here, and, HEAR YE!, in April 2017, look for a second series on Aural Ecologies of noise! –Guest Editors Dorothy Kim and Christopher Roman
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As humans, we engage all of our senses in every undertaking, whether or not we consciously perceive our sensory interactions. For instance, when we consume a gourmet meal, we don’t simply taste the food—we also see it, smell it, and feel it. We might also hear it as it is being prepared and/or consumed, and the meal’s pleasure can be enhanced by conversation. Overall, our experiences are enriched (or worsened) through our multisensory engagement. Similarly, reading involves multimodal feedback. While we might think of it as solely a visual experience, both auditory and tactile interactions occur within the process. As The Handbook of Multisensory Processes (518) tells us, audiotactile (sound+touch) and visuotactile (sight+touch) interactions are of great functional importance as they link remote senses to the body.
Thus, our interactions with everyday objects are multisensory, even if we do not consciously realize that fact. Arguably, although the sense of hearing is the first to develop in the womb, it is often the sense we overlook in solitary pursuits such as reading. Nevertheless, every human action occurs within a soundscape, much like they take place within a landscape. A soundscape is “an environment of sound with emphasis on the way it is perceived and understood by the individual, or by a society. It thus depends on the relationship between the individual and any such environment” (Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, 1978). Like landscapes, soundscapes must be considered in context and in relation to multisensory experience.

Fontaine des Mers, France, Image by Flickr User Daniel Mennerich
In particular, audio-visual interactions have been shown to have an effect on soundscape perception. Soundscape design elements reflect this concern. For example, a plan might include adding fountains, both as a noise control element and as a deliberate introduction of a soothing sonic feature. At the same time, fountains are a managed version of a natural element (water) that incorporate certain visual effects (e.g. reflective space and sparkling sunlight) creating textured and appealing landscapes. How the element is introduced into the environment has an effect on the perception (and appreciation) of the space. Furthermore, the touch of cool, clean water can supplement the overall impression, heightening the soothing effect initiated by the tinkling sound of the moving water. This is an audiotactile experience; that is, sounds connected with the sense of touch, an ecological system that combines the haptic and the aural.
Although the field of audiotactile integration has been somewhat dormant in the biological sciences since Paul von Schiller suggested back in 1932 that sounds, especially patterned noises, could affect tactile perception of roughness, recently some researchers have conducted experiments that test audiotactile qualities of materials. Several have suggested that these results might be synthetic—that is, the impact the sounds have modulate the haptic perception of the material being touched. For the most part, there seems to be connections between the perceptions of the sounds involved in touch and the perceptions of the stiffness of material. However, one study demonstrates that synchronized movements and sounds can affect the perception of the subject’s own skin. Suffice it to say, then, that sounds and texture and material quality are linked, both physically and perceptively.
Although humans rarely display deliberate awareness of audiotactile interaction, both auditory and haptic stimulation share similar temporal and psychological patterns in human consciousness. This connection would have perhaps been even more true in the Middle Ages than it is now, since the context of parchment and manuscript production and consumption was more immediately personal than paper production and reading is today.
To understand both the historicizing of the senses and the impact of shifting modes of literacy, it is possible to recreate some of the former immediacy of parchment production. During the summer of 2015, I participated in a National Endowments for the Humanities Seminar on Manuscript Materiality. This occasion provided me with the opportunity to make a manuscript page replica, starting from the “ground up” with the creation of parchment. We also studied theory, page layout, and other material circumstances, allowing us to really think about how people—both medieval and modern—engage with manuscripts using their senses. Elsewhere I have discussed the sense of touch. Here, I want to extend that discussion to include the sense of hearing; that is, I will focus on the sounds of parchment-making and parchment-reading, as activated through touching.
Parchment (Latin pergamenum) is the general term used for an animal hide that has been prepared for writing. Vellum (Latin vitulinum) more specifically refers to prepared calfskin. Parchment is made through an extended process of skinning, cleaning (de-fleshing and de-hairing), stretching, and scraping. It is stretched and scraped on special frames with adjustable screw pegs. The parchment maker scrapes the skin to the desired thickness with a curved tool, adjusting the pegs as the skin dries and changes texture. Often the skin is rewetted, scraped, and stretched numerous times in order to achieve the desired thickness. Sometimes a pumice stone finish is used at the end to create a surface porous enough to accept and retain ink. This is a vastly different process than tanning, which involves chemical alteration of the skins.

A close up of the scraping tool crafted by Jesse Meyer of Pergamena.
In the seminar, our parchment master was Jesse Meyer of Pergamena. He provided tools, guidance, and expertise as we participants stumbled through the process. Parchment making is hard, smelly work. My hands ached after only a few go-rounds with the tools, which included a pumice-like concoction of over-baked bread mixed with ground glass, knives that had been reshaped and re-handled, and Jesse’s special skin-refiner tool discussed below. Jesse told us many eye-opening things over the days of parchment making; however, possibly one of the most intriguing was how parchment masters could make a parchment “sing,” and how they, through this sound, knew whether or not the skin had reached its full potential.
So when Jesse demonstrated the various techniques on his sample skin, I listened carefully to the sounds he made by scraping as well as watching what he did with his hands. As he scraped away, the parchment did indeed sing. You can hear it yourself:
Audio Clip of Jesse’s “Parchment Singing”
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This aspect of parchment making fascinated me. After our seminar was done, I got back in touch with Jesse to talk further about the sounds of parchment making. He was more than forthcoming about his experiences. When Jesse first read about medieval parchment making, he ran across several mentions of the “ringing” sound that parchment masters produced when shaving their skins. He, like many of us, had never considered that aspect before. So he started paying attention to the different sounds he made as he used various tools on the skins. Right now, he uses a handmade tool that consists of a saw blade shaved to his specificity with a handmade handle on it. Each of us got a chance to hold it and try it on our own skin. It was an unwieldy tool for the uninitiated, and my parchment did not “sing” like Jesse’s did.

Parchment master, Jesse Meyer of Pergamena demonstrating his technique using a tool he created himself, designed after the fashion of medieval instruments. Image by author.
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Jesse is an expert, but even he says he cannot quite tell the nuances among the different types of skins by sound alone, although he notes that there are similarities among the types. Perhaps that skill could be developed over years of working solely with parchment, as a master in the Middle Ages would have. What Jesse has shared, however, is valuable: thicker skins are not as flexible, but they produce a “better,” that is clearer, sound.

Close up of parchment “dust.” Image by author.
Thickness of parchment can be due to a number of factors including preparation technique, but also the age and type of animal. Older animals yield thicker skins. Thicker skins are usually smoother and yield a cleaner sound. Of course if the animal has been injured or diseased, the skin may not be smooth. The firmer and tighter a skin is, the denser it is, and the easier it is to shave as well. In fact, Jesse says that denser skins can also make full, warm, “drum-like” sounds. Even more intriguingly, when I asked Jesse if he had ever noticed a difference between the hair side and the flesh side of skins, he said yes: the hair side of parchment sounds better to him because it is cleaner once the hair has been removed. The flesh side often retains fibrous bits even after many scrapings, and produces a more diffuse sound. When this side is scraped, it leaves behind a “fuzzy” residue until it has seen many passes with the scraper.
The relative dryness and “freshness” of the skin can also alter the clarity of the “ringing.” For example, compare the sound from the freshly prepared goatskin last summer to the sound from scraping a drier goatskin in Jesse’s workshop:
Repeat of first audio clip of Jesse’s “parchment singing”
Comparison clip of Jesse making a drier parchment sing
Both of these clips were produced from goatskins, and both were produced by Jesse who also used the same tool on each. While the sound is very similar, and both ring true, the drier skin produces a clearer, purer sound.
Plainly, then, the sounds of parchment making are vital to quality production. Most medieval manuscripts are made of three types of animal skins: sheep, goat, and calf. The prevalence of each animal is geographically dependent (sheepskin is more common in England, calfskin in France, and goatskin in Italy), although of course manuscripts traveled, and wealthy patrons commissioned materials they preferred. (see “DNA May Reveal Origins of Medieval Manuscripts” from Livescience)
Age, breed, size, and animal health can all contribute to the audiotactile qualities of a skin. However, there are some general guidelines. Sheepskins, for instance, are stretchier than goat skins, so their “ringing” can be muffled. Goatskins, which are thinner and stiffer, make a higher pitched “ring.” Calfskins are larger and easier than the others to get clean, and thus often make the cleanest “ring” and can do so more quickly than the others.
The type of skin is not the only factor in play. A rough blade would have produced a rough sound; conversely, an even, sharp blade would have produce the cleanest sound. The tautness of the skin in the frame can also affect pitch and tone, as can its dryness, its fatty content, and the age of the animal. As noted in a recent study, “The density of collagen fibrils in calf and goat parchment, compared with a more open weave and higher fat content in sheep parchment, favors the former two species [for producing the finest parchment]” (15070). Nevertheless, master parchment makers should have been able to manipulate any skin to produce superior results. As long as the corium (the dermis layer of skin containing all the connective tissues, including collagen, elastic fibers, hair follicles, sebaceous glands, blood vessels, and a number of other components) is sufficiently ground down, the parchment produced can be made very fine. And as the corium wears away, the sound of the scraping grows ever cleaner and clearer, just as the feel of the skin grows ever smoother. Overall, the tone gets higher as the skin gets thinner, and as long as the scrape is even, the tone should remain pure.
Here’s a video of Jesse scraping a calfskin. Compare this clear “ringing” to the goatskin scrapings:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEByB4cFi8Y/?taken-by=runninghands
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That’s all well and good for production of manuscripts, but texts are made for consumption. Earlier, I mentioned my having considered the qualities of hapacity and manuscripts involving Christ’s side wound in another blog post. One of the manuscripts I discussed, London, British Library, MS Egerton 1821, was clearly designed to be touched. This unusual manuscript contains a number of woodcuts that reflect devotion to the wounds of Christ, but, more strikingly, opens with three pages painted black, covered in drops of paint meant to emulate Christ’s flowing blood.

Image of MS Egerton 1821, British Library, London.
After a series of woodcuts, seven more pages appear. These are painted red with darker red paint splatters representing drops of blood. Although these pages do not contain specific images, they are meant to evoke interactive piety. The reader is invited to touch Christ’s wounds while praying or meditating. The worn appearance of Folio 2r demonstrates just how frequently the pages were touched and rubbed.
How did those pages feel to a medieval reader? Did they feel rough or smooth? Did the reader feel a frisson of excitement? Animal skin, such as parchment, carried with it the essence of the life of the animal, thus imbuing the images painted onto it with some semblance of life force, such as suggested by Thomas Aquinas in his Question 8 (Summa Theologica) regarding the potential for divinity placed within material objects. To a certain extent, then, touching an image of Christ was akin to touching a proxy of his body, allowing a powerful and individual haptic experience of faith. But what about the sounds made when these images became the subject of interaction? Was the medieval reader aware of touching the page, touching Christ’s wounds, even more because he or she would hear the interaction?
I took it upon myself to rub the worn folio in Egerton 1821. I did so reverently, if not because I felt a mystical connection to Christ, but because I felt awed at being able to reproduce a medieval experience (albeit 500 years later). There was a distinct sound, which you can hear in this clip:
Clip of the author rubbing the worn folio in Egerton 1821
I was surprised at the resultant sound. The worn part of the page looked soft, and the paint splatters looked cracked. Instead, to my surprise, the worn portions felt rougher than the cracked paint. Like the modern studies demonstrated, my audiotactile perceptions were altered initially by what I saw, but then by what I heard. At first, I touched hesitantly, but when the sounds produced became rhythmic, my hands felt smoother and the noise sounded more even. If I were repeatedly rubbing the same spot, in the same manner, producing the same sounds—much as a medieval reader might have done—the combined sensations would likely have produced a soporific and meditative state. That is, combining touch, particularly of a textured surface, with measured reading might have resulted in the ideal perceptive state for experiencing an immersive religious experience.
If, as numerous studies have demonstrated, vibrotactile stimuli can facilitate hearing, both for those with and without hearing impairments, then the sounds hand and fingers make when exploring a surface must contribute to an individual’s haptic perception and vice versa. How, then, would this connect on the behavioral or emotional level? Researchers have been exploring the reciprocal interactions of the auditory, tactile, and visual (sometimes referred to as cross-modal effects), often concentrating on sensory thresholds, information processing performance, and spatial navigation; however, only recently are studies beginning to investigate the emotional and physical benefits of such exchanges. For instance, one such study suggests auditory-tactile stimulation as a means to increase health and well-being.
Thus, a combination of touch felt by a reader with sound heard by a reader at the same time might influence the reader’s state of mind in a positive way, resulting in a positive effect on the body as well. A desired state can be reached more quickly through an audiotactile combination, resulting in a sensory illusion (perceiving something not physically extant but mentally present)—a powerful manner of evoking emotion. Similarly, the positive physical effects include relaxation, stress relief, and sleep enhancement. Again, this seemingly suggests that multisensory integration, especially the combination of touch and sound, might have produced a mental state in the (medieval) reader that made them particularly receptive to spiritual experience.

“Touch” by Daniel Friedman (CC BY 2.0)
I would suggest, then, that as medieval scholars, we should examine how audiotactile events are processed during dynamic contact between hands and material. Since different sensory modalities are integrated in the human brain to form our perceptions as a whole, including spatial and temporal relationships, it is important that we consider multisensory interactions that code the location of external events relative to our own bodies. Thus, to think through the process of making, touching, and hearing medieval parchment opens up a lot of possibilities for the study of medieval materiality—indeed for materiality in general as a field. The importance of the whole body sensory experience, including hearing, in reading is something we need to continue to imagine, to reimagine, to recreate, and to explore.
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Michelle M. Sauer is a professor at the University of North Dakota in the English Department. She recently released her latest book, titled Gender in Medieval Culture (Bloomsbury, 2015).
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Sounding Out! Podcast #54: The Sound of Magic-K.A. Laity
Mouthing the Passion: Richard Rolle’s Soundscapes–Christopher Roman
EPISODE LI: Creating New Words from Old Sounds–Marcella Ernest, Candace Gala, Leslie Harper, and Daryn McKenny
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