This seminar examines the interrelationship between sound, space and public culture. What makes any given space more habitable for some rather than others and how is sound implicated in these power dynamics? With a focus on the ways that sound reflects and simultaneously informs social hierarchy in public space, students will use music and sound to investigate a range of political issues such as segregation, gentrification, sonic governance, urban design, crowds, political movements, migration, and even war. These issues challenge notions of public spaces as neutral and open-to-all, helping us to re-conceive of cities and society in general as arenas of ongoing social and political struggle. Expanding the parameters of music as an analytic category, students will learn and critically apply core concepts in sound studies such as acoustemology, soundscapes, noise, voice, and silence as dimensions of political participation, performance, and public culture at large. Ethnography—that is, long-term participant observation and personal interviews—can prove particularly useful in threshing out these issues. If ethnographic literature in the humanities has historically prioritized a Western-centric bias toward the visual, how can a focus on sound change our understandings of the politics of public space?
- Course owner: Max Jack