Welcome to the Voice Studies Now Conference! This meeting brings together authors featured in the forthcomingOxford Handbook of Voice Studies (Nina Eidsheim and Katherine Meizel, editors) and provides a chance for all to learn from each other and engage with the larger voice studies community. Contracted with Oxford University Press, the project presents diverse approaches in order to: 1) address the question what is voice?, 2) affirm the development of voice studies as a transdisciplinary field of inquiry, and 3) establish a dialogue to foster a more complete understanding of voice and its meanings. The presenters represent multiple fields of study, including musicology, ethnomusicology, performance, medicine, speech science, linguistics, comparative literature, psychology, broadcasting, gender and Queer studies, disability studies, and media studies. It is our hope that the conference will help us begin to identify the many points of intersection in these disparate approaches to voice, and to facilitate interdisciplinary communication and collaboration.
-Nina Eidsheim and Katherine Meizel