Tactical Soundwalking in the City: A Feminist Turn from Eye to Ear

Thorpe S.J., Alsuwayed H.M.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has seen a growing interest in the uptake of cloud-based educational technologies in the university sector in recent years. In order to better understand the potential of cloud-based opportunities, it was considered important to first investigate the experiences of academic staff in their current use of e-learning systems. A survey was undertaken to explore whether current e-learning systems were serving tertiary learning requirements as articulated by those academics teaching and providing the e-learning services in Saudi Arabian universities. The online survey collected 55 responses. Findings contrasted with earlier studies critical of the country's e-learning provision and suggest that Saudi Arabian universities may now have a sounder e-learning infrastructure in place. Shifting e-learning services into the cloud was identified as a new opportunity that may allow academics to leverage the benefits of cloud technologies and to address some of the challenges they face.

Goh A.

This article proposes that feminist epistemologies via Donna Haraway's “Situated Knowledges” can be productively brought to bear upon theories of sonic knowledge production, as “sounding situated knowledges.” Sounding situated knowledges re-reads debates around the “nature of sound” with a Harawayan notion of the “natureculture of sound.” This aims to disrupt a traditional subject-object relation which I argue has perpetuated a pervasive “sonic naturalism” in sound studies. The emerging field of archaeoacoustics (acoustic archaeology), which examines the role of sound in human behaviour in archaeology, is theorized as an opening with potentially profound consequences for sonic knowledge production which are not currently being realized. The echo is conceived as a material-semiotic articulation, which akin to Haraway's infamous cyborg, serves as a feminist figuration which enables this renegotiation. Archaeoacoustics research, read following Haraway both reflectively and diffractively, is understood as a critical juncture for sound studies which exposes the necessity of both embodiedness and situatedness for sonic knowledge production. Given the potential opened up by archaeoacoustics through the figure of echo, a critical renegotiation of the subject-object relation in sound studies is suggested as central in further developing theories of sonic knowledge production.

Mouton J.

In Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961), the protagonist's transformation from feminine masquerade to flâneuse occurs as a result of her involvement with a city, specifically Paris. Positing the possibility of a female flânerie, this essay establishes a connection between Agnes Varda and the writers George Sand and Virginia Woolf, thereby showing how a woman walker—a flâneuse—lays claim to subjectivity .

Haraway D.

SMITH C.D.