Christine T. Ehrick

Professor and Department Chair

About

Christine Ehrick is a historian of Latin America with an interest in gender, radio and sound.

Her second book, Radio and the Gendered Soundscape: Women and Broadcasting in Argentina and Uruguay, 1930-1950, was published in 2015 by Cambridge University Press. A history of women’s voices on the radio in two of South America’s most important early radio markets, this book explores what it meant to hear female voices on the radio and asks readers to consider gender in its aural and sonic dimensions. A Spanish translation of this book was recently published by Prometeo Libros in Argentina.

 

She is currently part of a research team (with faculty and students in Argentina and Uruguay) documenting the history of Radio Colonia, a border broadcaster based in Uruguay but aimed primarily at Argentine audiences across the river.  Dating back to the 1930s, Radio Colonia played an especially important role from the 1960s through the early 1980s, when the station served as a vital source of uncensored news and information during a time of repressive right-wing military rule in both countries.  In addition to Radio Colonia, she is also researching the wider history of radio and resistance to military dictatorship in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile.

 

Dr. Ehrick has also continued her work with the Library of Congress-affiliated Radio Preservation Task Force, a group formed in 2014 by the National Recording Preservation Board to “facilitate preservation of, research on, and educational uses of radio recordings” held by public and private archives in the US and beyond. She is currently part of the group’s Advisory Committee on Transnational Radio Research and serves as a liaison between the Task Force and radio and sound preservation projects in Latin America.