Bonnie Gordon: Soundbites of Racial Cartographies in the Early Modern Atlantic

Bonnie Gordon's article "Soundbites of Racial Cartographies in the Early Modern Atlantic” was published in a special issue of Atlantic Studies called Early Atlantic Soundings. 

This article is a companion piece to an article called “Ghosting Virginia,” that came out in the fall of 2025 in Portable Gray. Both essays start from the same question. Where did the mythology of 17th century Virginia come from and how do the stories that John Smith and his cohort told continue to be heard as truth. "Soundbites" works through the colonial archive itself, tracing the ways that European settlers heard Black and Indigenous voices as "noise" and wrote that mishearing into law. "Ghosting Virginia”  follows the same fictions forward by listening to early English ballads and twentieth century textbook accounts of Virginia history.  Both essays turn to Zora Neale Hurston as a model for hearing musics that have been left out of the archive.  The essays and the larger project grew out Gordon's teaching at the University of Virginia. They build on collaboration with colleagues at George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth University on the statewide project Musical Practices of Early Black Virginias and on her participation in coastal resilience workshops on the Eastern Shore. 
 

Bonnie Gordon is a Professor of Music, University of Virginia, Vice President American Musicological Society, Co-Director, Sound Justice Lab & C-ville Tulips.  Her recent book is Voice Machines: The Castrato the Cat Piano and Other Strange Sounds