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From the Land of the Ice and Snow: The Female Gender in Finnish Heavy Metal

17 May 2017, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm

Nightwish…

Event Information

Location

UCL, Drayton House B06, 30 Gordon St, London WC1H 0AX

Speaker: Amanda DiGioia (UCL SSEES)

The objective of my PhD study is to examine gender as a part of the complex web of cultural connections between Finnish women and heavy metal.

Looking at gender as performance via an ethnography of Finnish female heavy metal music fans will serve to illustrate the Finnish metal scene’s expectations of people based on their gender. Heavy metal academics, such as Keith Kahn-Harris, the British author of Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge, have gone as far to say that “heavy metal is almost celebrated as one of the country’s major cultural exports” (Baird, 2013, n. pag). Due to the genre’s popularity, this will also shape a larger understanding of gender in Finnish society. This study of gender in the Finnish heavy metal music scene, upon its completion, will also show what constructions surrounding the female gender are or are not adopted from broader Finnish culture. This presentation will focus on the background gender studies in metal music studies, as well as the background of Finnish heavy metal music in metal music studies, before closing with my PhD work plans. Amanda DiGioia is a first year PhD Student at SSEES. Her research interests include gender theory, heavy metal music, and horror studies. Her first book, Childbirth and Parenting in Horror Texts: The Marginalized and the Monstrous, (featured in the ‘Alternativity and Marginalization’ series through Emerald Group Publishing) will be released this fall. 

A seminar hosted by the UCL SSEES Social Sciences & Arts and Humanities Research Student  Seminars.
Student Coordinators:
Peter Braga and Liisa Tuhkanen

Image: Finnish band Nightwish at Tuska Open Air 2013 By Cecil (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons