Keynote Speech by Dr. Sameena Mulla

Emory University

4:00-5:00 pm

Worsham Cinema

Constitutive Technicity in Sexual Assault Sentencing

In Sound Studies, the concept of constitutive technicity describes "any and every supplement that humans engage in the production, reception, and attenuation of sound" (Steingo and  Sykes 2019, 11). Dwelling on the acoustic dimensions of sexual assault sentencing, this talk works through the ways in which we hear and feel criminal sentencing and what it is that these modes of audition attenuate us to: namely, a particular racial and gendered ordered that must be sustained through incarceration. Drawing on fieldwork in Milwaukee's felony courts, I think about the way talk is moderated by the various actors who may speak during sentencing hearings and how sound is disciplined and disciplining. Within the stifling space of the court, I work through how those who are compelled to speak or remain in silence navigate treacherous terrain. If sounding serves to inscribe orders of the human, I ask: where do people who have been sexually assaulted and people who have committed sexual assault fall within these orders?

About the Speaker:

Sameena Mulla is Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. She is the author of The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses and Sexual Assault Victims and, with Heather Hlavka, Bodies in Evidence: Race, Science and Gender in Sexual Assault Adjudication. Her research examines the intersections between race, policing, and sexual violence.