A discussion of Sarah Kessler's new book, Out of Sync: Ventriloquism in Popular Media from Vinyl to TikTok (Duke University Press, 2026). The author will be joined in conversation by Roshanak Kheshti (University of California, Berkeley) and Dominic Pettman (New School), moderated by Kara Keeling (USC). Registration is required. REGISTER HERE

About the Book: Ventriloquism, or the art of “throwing the voice,” has outdated and even unsettling connotations to many, associated with vaudeville and the nefarious talking dolls of so many horror movies. Despite this, ventriloquism remains a popular performance art, filling theaters and concert venues with audiences eager to hear puppets voice what humans, in an increasingly polarized present, want to say but feel they can’t. In Out of Sync, Sarah Rebecca Kessler explores ventriloquism’s persistence in, and relevance to, the contemporary moment, examining performances by recent and current practitioners such as Richard Sandfield, Nina Conti, Jeff Dunham, and Terry Fator while also tracing ventriloquism’s travels across media including vinyl records, documentary films, music videos, and social media platforms such as TikTok. Kessler argues that ventriloquism and its many remediations amplify a cultural politics of synchronization that positions not just sounds and images, but voices and bodies, as more and less out of sync along the lines of race, gender, and sexuality. Looking closely at the art and its outgrowths, Out of Sync gives insight into the operations of race, gender, and sexuality as distinctly audiovisual processes.

About the Author: Sarah Kessler is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Her interdisciplinary research spans the fields of comparative media studies, critical race theory, queer and gender studies, voice and sound studies, and television studies. Her articles and essays have appeared in Camera Obscura, Film Quarterly, In These Times, Public Books, Theory & Event, Triple Canopy, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is the TV section editor at Public Books.

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. 

This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.