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The Hi-Fi Man : = Masculinity, Modularity, and Home Audio Technology in the U.S. Midcentury.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	The Hi-Fi Man :/
Reminder of title:	Masculinity, Modularity, and Home Audio Technology in the U.S. Midcentury.
Author:	Smith-Biwer, Kelli.
Description:	1 online resource (250 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-11, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International84-11A.
Subject:	Music history. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798379554637

The Hi-Fi Man : = Masculinity, Modularity, and Home Audio Technology in the U.S. Midcentury.
Smith-Biwer, Kelli.

The Hi-Fi Man :Masculinity, Modularity, and Home Audio Technology in the U.S. Midcentury. - 1 online resource (250 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-11, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

Hi-fi home audio systems are modular-that is, they are made of a collection of interchangeable components such as turntables, receivers, amplifiers, and loudspeakers. At the advent of hi-fi culture in the 1950s, modular audio systems were marketed primarily to men while all-in-one console systems were advertised in women's and home magazines. As early as 1952, well-known audio critic Edward Tatnall Canby reinforced this gendered technological divide when he wrote, "Aunt Minnie can run a [console system] and so can three-year-old-sister Jane...Me I'm a hi-fi man of sorts and I want my stuff really separate...The separate-unit system is the thing for me." In this dissertation, I introduce my concept of modular masculinity, a framework that reveals how post-war technological discourse reflected and encouraged an understanding of masculinity as flexible, reconfigurable, and dynamic. I show how the hi-fi system, with its separate, customizable components, facilitated a range of technological engagement that allowed men to explore and express a variety of masculine roles: moody musician, loving father, dutiful husband, resourceful carpenter, exacting engineer, and so on. Focusing on discourses around loudspeakers, cables, and tonearms, I examine the images and rhetoric around each to contextualize and analyze historic co-constructions of masculinity and sound technology. These case studies center on midcentury magazines such as High Fidelity, Hi-Fi & Music Review, and Audio, as well as archival material including technical circulars, corporate ephemera, engineering notebooks from research labs, patents, and government publications.Modular masculinity is a flexible framework for analyzing the social, political, and economic forces that shaped the ways men engaged with home audio technologies. Gender has never been a simple male-female binary: my framework reveals masculinity as a multivalent formation that develops both in dialogue with and independently from femininity. This study into the discourse surrounding midcentury hi-fi equipment illuminates complex constructions of music technology and masculinity that continue to influence marketing and consumer behavior today.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798379554637Subjects--Topical Terms:

1179487
Music history.
Subjects--Index Terms:

High fidelityIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

The Hi-Fi Man : = Masculinity, Modularity, and Home Audio Technology in the U.S. Midcentury.
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520 $a Hi-fi home audio systems are modular-that is, they are made of a collection of interchangeable components such as turntables, receivers, amplifiers, and loudspeakers. At the advent of hi-fi culture in the 1950s, modular audio systems were marketed primarily to men while all-in-one console systems were advertised in women's and home magazines. As early as 1952, well-known audio critic Edward Tatnall Canby reinforced this gendered technological divide when he wrote, "Aunt Minnie can run a [console system] and so can three-year-old-sister Jane...Me I'm a hi-fi man of sorts and I want my stuff really separate...The separate-unit system is the thing for me." In this dissertation, I introduce my concept of modular masculinity, a framework that reveals how post-war technological discourse reflected and encouraged an understanding of masculinity as flexible, reconfigurable, and dynamic. I show how the hi-fi system, with its separate, customizable components, facilitated a range of technological engagement that allowed men to explore and express a variety of masculine roles: moody musician, loving father, dutiful husband, resourceful carpenter, exacting engineer, and so on. Focusing on discourses around loudspeakers, cables, and tonearms, I examine the images and rhetoric around each to contextualize and analyze historic co-constructions of masculinity and sound technology. These case studies center on midcentury magazines such as High Fidelity, Hi-Fi & Music Review, and Audio, as well as archival material including technical circulars, corporate ephemera, engineering notebooks from research labs, patents, and government publications.Modular masculinity is a flexible framework for analyzing the social, political, and economic forces that shaped the ways men engaged with home audio technologies. Gender has never been a simple male-female binary: my framework reveals masculinity as a multivalent formation that develops both in dialogue with and independently from femininity. This study into the discourse surrounding midcentury hi-fi equipment illuminates complex constructions of music technology and masculinity that continue to influence marketing and consumer behavior today.
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