Paper short abstract:

This paper explores relationships between sound, memory and embodied experiences of senses of home and exile. I place analytic focus on voice and accent as embodied sensory expression and experience, and propose directions for methodological development in sensory ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores relationships between sound, memory and embodied experiences of senses of home and exile. Drawing on a reading of letters interwoven with a reflexive account of ethnographic fieldwork, I place analytic focus on voice and accent—spoken, heard, forgotten and remembered-- as constitutive of individual and collective identities, and as embodied sensory expression and experience. "Letters home" are a significant source for explorations of the experience of exile, descriptions of everyday life in Diaspora communities, familial connections across space and time, and relationships to home(s). This paper offers a reading of a collection of letters written by a woman to her sister in Dublin. The archival record begins in 1922 when, accused of engaging in a sexual relationship judged transgressive, the 42- year-old fled Ireland for Montreal, Quebec. It concludes in 1939 when she returned to Dublin. The letter writer was an actress and an elocution teacher for whom listening to and performing voice and accent was a livelihood, an expression of gendered, national and class identity, and a creative relationship to being in the world. Through commentaries on voices she hears, voices she misses, and the responses she senses to her own voice, her letters describe her experiences of exile, and her ambivalent longings for and imaginings of "home" in both places. Led to attention to voice, accent and their relationship to senses of home and identity through this archival research, I offer an analysis of the fieldwork process, and propose directions for methodological development in sensory ethnography.