Rebecca S. Lentjes

PhD Student in Gender and Women's Studies, University of Kentucky

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About Rebecca

Lentjes's research focuses on abortion access, sensory ethnography, sound studies, reproductive justice, and rightwing social movements. Lentjes as a feminist activist ethnomusicologist, writes about gendered sonic violence in the United States. Lentjes's work explores instantiations of noise such as mansplaining, catcalls, anti-abortion protests, fetal heartbeat bills, & "women's right to know" legislation, which all constitute examples of what she terms "sonic patriarchy." Lentjes serves as a case manager for the New York Abortion Access Fund as well as a clinic escort volunteer leader at an abortion clinic.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

How City Policymakers Can Address Verbal Harassment at Abortion Clinics

Amy Elizabeth Alterman
Rebecca S. Lentjes

Policy Recommendation, May 2021

In the News

Opinion: "Nonconsensual Listening, Everyday Sexism, and the Mundanity of Trauma," Rebecca S. Lentjes, rebeccalentjes.com, February 13, 2021.

Opinion: "Sounds of Life: Fetal Heartbeat Bills and the Politics of Animacy," Rebecca S. Lentjes, Sounding Out, July 9, 2018.

Opinion: "Gendered Sonic Violence, From the Waiting Room to the Locker Room," Rebecca S. Lentjes, Sounding Out, October 31, 2016.

Publications

"The Ripping Apart of Silence: Sonic Patriarchy and Anti-Abortion Harassment" Resonance 1, no. 4 (2020): 422-442.

Explores the gendered sound world of anti-abortion protests outside U.S. abortion clinics, employing the concept of sonic patriarchy and arguing for a more rigorous regulation of sound-making outside of clinics.

"The Sonic Politics of the U.S. Abortion Wars" American Music 39, no. 3 (Forthcoming Fall 2021).

Discusses the Sonic Politics of the U.S. Abortion Wars. Theorizes silence as a form of political refusal within American soundscapes of gendered domination, using abortion clinic protests as ethnographic case studies, and examining the intersections of race, religion, and gender that inform the policing of sounds in public space.