In recent years, the “female pioneers” of electronic music have coalesced into a tightly defined canon, becoming known for an iconoclastic presence in the male-dominated field of the time. However, since their own writing and interviews reveal significant differences in the ways these female artists thought about gender and sound, Whitney’s research takes a closer look at each of these artist’s distinctive feminist aesthetics, asking how their explicit statements about gender can help us interpret their works in sound, if at all.

For this talk, Whitney will start from her personal relationship with the canon of “female pioneers of electronic music” listed in Lisa Rovner’s 2020 documentary Sisters with Transistors: Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Maryanne Amacher, Èliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and Laurie Spiegel. From the perspective of gender theory, she will then talk through issues of exceptionalism, mainstreaming, and coloniality that are inherent in the canonisation process (with many thanks to Marta Beszterda van Vliet), followed by a sociological dive into the continuum of gender identification and beliefs between Pauline Oliveros and Suzanne Ciani that is evident in retrospective documentaries, interviews, published essays, and archival materials. With these differences in mind, we will open a discussion of the affordances and limitations of identity-based canons across disciplines, and I hope to share some of my new work in sound to consider aspects of identity that are contained or revealed.