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.

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9781501383410

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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 turn 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)

Author Information

Nathalie Aghoro is a postdoctoral researcher 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.

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