Using mythology as a generative matrix, this article investigates the relationship between knowledge, words, embodiment and gender as they play out in academic writing's voice and, in particular, in doctoral voice. The doctoral thesis is defensive, a performance seeking admittance into discipline scholarship. Yet in finding its scholarly voice, the Arts Humanities doctorate also constructs the academic identity of its author. Creating identity is more troublesome than meeting discipline conventions, because it is more personal. Identity is a complex construct. Voice must locate subjectivity but also rise above it in self-reflective critique: mythology, like theory, may suggest possibilities for negotiating the intersectedness of academic utterance.