Reconfiguring Gender, Sexuality, Music, and Higher Education

An abundance of research in music focused on composers who identify as women and/or lesbians has emerged since the 1980s, but the impacts of undertaking this work as a researcher has not been examined. The chapter thus asks whether working as a feminist and/or queer researcher has negative impacts, noting that in the 1990s Susan McClary claimed that undertaking such work would be tantamount to committing professional suicide. In her recently published work—which is corroborated by her own reflection piece for the present chapter—McClary goes further to reveal that she has also had to contend with violence, including rape and death threats. Is this a common story for researchers in this field? While the chapter’s intention is not to present a definitive answer, it nevertheless suggests that women like McClary who hold tenured academic music positions, and who are clever and outspoken, pose a threat to the musicological establishment and must be silenced. Five female academics—Susan McClary, Elizabeth Wood, Judith Lochhead, Jennifer Shaw, and Gillian Rodger—have been chosen because they represent two countries (the US and Australia), thereby giving a glimpse into a geographical exchange, as well as generational and work status differences, were asked to write short reflection pieces about their experiences. How do they negotiate a field that is/has been hostile? Is it easier to work in feminist and queer musicology in the present day than it was in the 1990s? Drawing on new materialist philosophy, especially that of physicist Karen Barad, the author (Macarthur) carries out a series of diffractive readings of the contributors’ reflections. In a Baradian sense, diffraction is to do with the behaviour of light and sound waves, the idea that when waves overlap or encounter obstructions, they form patterns of difference. If we transpose this idea to feminist and queer musicology, patterns of difference emerge that counter the usual positive versus negative binary constructions.