Within the Western musical context, trans* and gender non-conforming singers are increasingly working professionally and ‘out’. A handful of transgender choruses are meeting in cities across the U.S. This talk will theoretically tease out the ‘material relationality’ of the voice to think through a critical feminist materialisms-inspired understanding of the politicism of the voice. ‘Vocality’ will be presented as an embodied and lived phenomenon – a conceptualization that is useful for investigating the enactment of agency of trans* vocality and for thinking through how singing, a kind of ‘sensuous knowledge,’ can be a joyful resource for politicism and social change. Turning to the lived experiences of trans* and gender non-conforming singers, and specifically those of a classical singer who transitioned from mezzo-soprano to tenor, the talk explores notions of gender and vocal identity within the context of vocal music and addresses the challenges and possibilities singing offers trans* people.

Holly Patch (she, her, hers) is a doctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Research (IZG) and Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS) at Bielefeld University, Germany. With an MA in Gender Studies from Bielefeld University and a BA in Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies and Music from the University of Iowa, her research focus lies at the intersection of these already interdisciplinary fields. Her doctoral project in sociology is a study on trans* vocality and the lived experience of singing. In 2017, her master's thesis was awarded a prize for outstanding theses from the Section for Women's and Gender Studies of the German Sociological Association.