Radio and the Gendered Soundscape is an engaging exploration of women and radio broadcasting in Argentina and Uruguay from 1930 to 1950. Bringing together histories of radio personalities and programs, Christine Ehrick argues that “radio blurred the boundaries between public and private space and gave the female voice a heightened profile at a moment at which women were demanding new rights and challenging the relegation of the feminine to the private realm” (p. 2). Ehrick weaves empirical research and theory together in dynamic style to show how women's on-the-air voices both reinforced and challenged patriarchal norms in a turbulent Río de la Plata.
Ehrick's work contributes to a growing body of scholarly literature on radio broadcasting in the Americas, and in Argentina more specifically. Beatriz Sarlo's The Technical Imagination, Robert Claxton's From “Parsifal” to Perón, and Matthew Karush's Culture of Class have all tackled radio in Argentina during...