The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen

by Nathalie Aghoro (Editor)

Overview

Sound positions individuals as social subjects. The presence of human beings, animals, objects, or technologies reverberates into the spaces we inhabit and produces distinct soundscapes that render social practices, group associations, and socio-cultural tensions audible. The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen unites interdisciplinary perspectives on the social dimensions of sound in audiovisual and literary environments. The essays in the collection discuss soundtracks for shared values, group membership, and collective agency, and engage with the subversive functions of sound and sonic forms of resistance in American literature, film, and TV.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501361388
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/07/2021
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Nathalie Aghoro is Assistant Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany with an interest in auditory culture, postmodern and contemporary literature, media theory, and social justice. Her book Sounding the Novel: Voice in Twenty-First Century American Fiction (2018) examines the sonic mediality of voice in the works of Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, Jennifer Egan, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction to The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen
Nathalie Aghoro, University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany

Part I: Sound Practice Across Media

1. Listening in Print
Nicole Brittingham Furlonge, Columbia University, USA

2. When a Poem "Sounds" Through the Body
Irene Polimante, University of Macerata, Italy

3. Practices of Unmixing: Film Aesthetics, Sound, and the New Hollywood Cinema
Christof Decker, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Munich, Germany

Part II: Soundtracks of Collective Memory

4. Voice and Wake: Susan Howe, M. NourbeSe Philip, and the Ecology of Echology
Julius Greve, University of Oldenburg, Germany

5. Reframing Indigenous Sonic Archives: Jeremy Dutcher and the Cultural Politics of Refusal
Sabine Kim, Mainz University, Germany

6. Unsettled Scores: Listening to Black Oklahoma on the American “Frontier”
Tsitsi Jaji, Duke University, USA

Part III: Social Acoustics and Politics of Sound

7. The Operator and the Final Girl: Gender, Genre, and Black Sonic Labor in The Call
Allison Whitney, Texas Tech University, USA

8. Bohemian Like You: The Construction of Cool Sound Collectives in Serial Television
Florian Groß, Leibniz University, Germany

9. Sonic Sites of Subversion: Listening and the Politics of Place in Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange
Nathalie Aghoro, University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany

10. From "Dead Spots" to "Hot Spots": Ann Petry's “On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon”
Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Binghamton University, USA

Index

Editorial Reviews

The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen brings together a dazzling array of thinkers and ideas to highlight the deep enmeshment of the sonic and the social as they appear across media such as cinema, television, and literature. This is a much needed volume that pushes the central insights of sound studies in new and fruitful directions. In doing so, Nathalie Aghoro's wonderful and much needed collection makes indispensable contributions to sound studies, film and television studies, literary studies, and critical theory.” —Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, Professor of African American Studies, Northwestern University, USA

“In this wonderful book, Nathalie Aghoro has collected a truly diverse collection of voices that reconfigures our understanding of the role that literature, poetry, film, and television can play in the development of an alternative sonic aesthetic that is both cultural and political. The collection takes us through a sonic voyage enabling the reader to listen afresh to the sounds of race, gender, diaspora, trauma, displacement, and silences through a newly politicized ear” —Michael Bull, Professor of Sound Studies, University of Sussex, UK, and author of Sirens (Bloomsbury, 2020)

“The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen captures audiovisual, acoustic, and literary media as cultural sites where sound and listening enable a range of resistances and new social configurations, as well as critical inquiries. From literature and poetic expression that turban the page into a reverberant arena to performative and televisual productions that figure listening as potent means for building solidarity across diasporic and postcolonial communities, the edited collection makes a compelling case for acoustics as a generative critical framework. By fostering acoustic literacy, The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen enables new ways of attuning to the politics of race, class, and gender and thoughtfully unpacks the aural imaginary as a complex vehicle for social debate and transformation.” —Brandon LaBelle, Professor, Art Academy, University of Bergen, Norway, and author of Acoustic Justice (Bloomsbury, 2021)

From the Publisher