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(Virtual/ Online Event with Professional Live Captions in English)

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Stacey Copeland on Seeking Queer Soundwork: On Lesbian Feminist Practices of Discoverability

This presentation invites scholars and media practitioners alike into lesbian feminist radio histories and queer podcast futures of community discoverability.

Audio media play a key role in queer activism as; entertainment, a public facing political project, a community space, and as part of a larger lesbian feminist information infrastructure. Early lesbian feminist radio shows such as The Lesbian Show (1979) at CFRO-FM and Dykes on Mykes (1987) at CKUT-FM offer a unique glimpse into a past in which ‘visibility’ - or in this case ‘audibility’ - was key to establishing political rights and social education around women’s sexuality. Linked to a larger movement of lesbian information activism taking place during the second wave feminist movement (1970’s-1990’s), lesbian feminist community radio was/is a vital form of information activism. But how did they get the word out and what sort of networks did they build in the process? Applying a queer temporal ear, listening back to Dykes on Mykes is not so different from listening to a queer podcast today. What has changed are the technological affordances, politics and practices of discoverability. Informed by the work of scholars such as Cait McKinney (2020) and Kara Keeling (2014), Copeland takes on an intersectional feminist information studies and queer media studies approach to gain a sense of the complex intermediality, infrastructure, and counterpublic formations surrounding the discoverability of queer soundwork. Copeland's archival research into queer feminist soundwork tunes us into renewed communal practices of safety, accountability, and discoverability. Ultimately returning to lesbian radio activism as a potential media model toward more equitable feminist world-making possibilities for future queer media makers.

Speaker Bio: Stacey Copeland (she/her/hers) is a media producer and Joseph-Armand Bombardier (SSHRC) Ph.D. candidate at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication in Vancouver, Canada. Copeland's doctoral research focuses on lesbian and queer feminist audio media. She received her Master of Arts from the Ryerson York joint Communication and Culture graduate program with a concentration in radio production, sound studies, media culture and gender studies. It was during her Master’s work that Copeland co-founded FemRadio, a Toronto, Canada based feminist community radio collective. She is currently the project manager and supervising producer of the scholarly podcasting initiative Amplify Podcast Network. Website: staceycopeland.com/

This event is part of the 4th Season of the , organized by Dr. Alex Ketchum.

Our series was made possible thanks to our sponsors: SSHRC, the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), the DIGS Lab, Milieux, Initiative for Indigenous Futures, MILA, Dean of Arts Grant, ReQEF, and more (see our website!)

There is no fee required to attend this event. We will provide professional captions in english. This event will be recorded and made after the event.

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