Episode 27. Kurdish Women and Desires for Voice by Marlene Schäfers

What does it mean to have a voice? And how does a voice need to sound like if it is going to matter? In this episode, Marlene Schäfers (Utrecht University) discusses her research with Kurdish women singers and poets to explore what makes the voice an object of desire and appeal in the contemporary world, particularly for historically marginalized subjects. Field recordings of Kurdish classical and recent repertoires reveal how contemporary politics of voice shape what voices mean, how they sound, and how they impact listeners. Marlene Schäfers is Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She obtained her PhD at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her first monograph, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey was published with the University of Chicago Press in 2022. You can find more information, including additional field recordings on her website: www.marleneschafers.com Acknowledgements: My thanks are due to the Kurdish women who so generously shared their time with me and let me record their voices. The recordings featured in this podcast were made in Wan, Turkey, in 2011-12.