Lesbian radio radicals and the queer podcast revolution: A political phenomenology of soundwork

Today online searches for lesbian and queer podcasts return a rich listing of content for our consumption. But how did we arrive at this particular moment? And what makes a podcast or radio show 'queer' anyway? Lesbian Radio Radicals and The Queer Podcast Revolution explores the cultural and political production of queer feminist soundwork. In conversation with cutting-edge queer and feminist podcast producers and radiomakers across North America, the author invites us to turn a feminist-embodied ear to the past to uncover how gender, race, and sexual orientations are embedded in our everyday media listening practices. Highlighting the voices and experiences of past and present, this research queers our senses across media time and space, weaving its way through the campy sounds of Vancouver Co-Op Radio's The Lesbian Show (1979-2014) and CKUT Montreal's Dykes on Mykes (1987-2016) and, into the erotic politics of contemporary queer podcasts such as Queer Public and The Heart. Podcast practices and the frictions of feminist media labour under capitalism are brought into conversation with second-wave lesbian community radio to reveal enduring audibility activism rooted in lesbian feminist politics of erotic power and community care. Ultimately, Copeland aims to reveal the crucial role of soundwork in queering feminist media practices of cultural production, perception, and distribution. This work contributes a sound-centred queer feminist phenomenology relevant to anyone interested in cultural sound studies, queer theory, radio and podcast studies, feminist media studies or the study of gender, sexuality, and media in the humanities and social sciences.