Syllabus
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This is a tentative schedule by week and day for assignments, readings, and activities. Tentative means I can vary it as much as seems appropriate. However, plan on sticking very close to this outline especially on major due dates. I will post all revisions of and additions to the syllabus on this web page.
Week 1 - Introductions (2006)
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R Jan 16
- Ball and Hawk, "Sound in/as Compositional Space: A Next Step in Multiliteracies" Special Issue of Computers and Composition (2006) - Intro + Pick One:
- Halbritter, "Musical Rhetoric in Integrated Media Composition"
- Hess, "Was Foucault a Plagiarist? Hip-hop Sampling and Academic Citation"
- McKee, "Sound Matters: Notes Toward the Analysis and Design of Sound in Multimodal Webtexts"
- Rice, "The Making of Ka-knowledge: Digital Aurality"
- Rickert-Salvo, "The Distributed Gesamptkunstwerk: Sound, Worlding, and New Media Culture"
- Shankar, "Speaking on the Record: A Theory of Composition"
- Shipka, "Sound Engineering: Toward a Theory of Multimodal Soundness"
- Soundwriting Pedagogies (listen to promo and preface)
- Sterne, "Sonic Imaginations" SSR
- Novak and Sakakeeny, "Introduction" Keywords in Sound
- Coole and Frost, "Introduction" New Materialisms
Listening
- 20,000 Hertz, Soundmarks
- 99% Invisible, The Sizzle – Sonic Branding
- 99% Invisible, NBC Chimes – Behind the Scenes of the First Trademarked Sound
- Wired, The Psychology Behind the Worlds Most Recognizable Sounds (also here, and here)
Suggested
- Enculturation Special issue: "Writing/Music/Culture" (1999)
- Computers and Composition Online Special Issue: Sound (scroll down to 2006)
- Pinch and Bijsterveld, "New Keys to the World of Sound" Intro to The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies
- Farias and Bender, "Introduction." Urban Assemblages
- 99% Invisible, Sound Episodes
Week 2 – Voice and Listening (2009)
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R Jan 23
- Selfe, "The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing" CCC (2009)
- Chion, "The Three Listening Modes" SSR
- Barthes, "Listening"
- Barthes, "Grain of the Voice" SSR
- Ihde, "Under the Signs of Husserl and Heidegger" Ch.2 Listening and Voice
- Ahmed, "Orientations Matter" New Materialisms
- Keywords - Hearing + Voice
Listening
- Everything was Forever Until it was No More (Qualitative Listening)
- A Room Listening to Itself
- Listening to La Jetee
Suggested
- Cavarero, "Multiple Voices" SSR
- Ihde, "The Auditory Dimension" SSR
- Ihde, Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of Sound (Ch.8)
- Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others
- Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World
- Kane, Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice
- Voegelin, Listening to Noise and Silence
- Grimshaw and Garner, Sonic Virtuality: Sound as Emergent Perception
- Links - Listening
Week 3 – Soundscapes (2011)
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R Jan 30
- Hawk, Rev. of Sonic Persuasions: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age, by Greg Goodale PnR (2011/2014)
- Davis, "Writing with Sound" Special issue of Currents in Electronic Literacy (2011) - Intro + Pick 1
- Ronell, "Nietzsche was a DJ"
- Paul Miller, "DJ Spooky Interview"
- Barness, "Common Sounds"
- Carter, "inter.Virtual.Vitalism.views: Aural Encounters with Byron Hawk, Victor Vitanza, and Alex Reid"
- Stedman, "How Music Speaks: In the Background, In the Remix, In the City"
- Lueck, "Writing Without Sound: Language Politics in Closed Captioning"
- Hawk and Smith, "‘Digimortal’: Sound in a Posthuman World"
- Haynes, "Thinking Across the Neck: Playing Slide with Fret/work Blues"
- Schicke, "An Autoethnography of Sound: Local Music Culture in Colorado"
- Rice, "Inquiry as Telos"
- VanKooten, "A New Composition, a 21st Century Pedagogy, and the Rhetoric of Music"
- Blaauw-Hara and Putman, "Remixing the Personal Narrative Essay"
- French and Bloom, "Auralacy: From Plato to Podcasting and Back Again"
- Sirc and Ceraso, "Digital Lyrical"
- Schafer, "The Soundscape" SSR
- Blesser and Salter, "Ancient Acoustic Spaces" SSR
- Johnstone, "Communication in Classical Contexts"
- Ingold, Being Alive Ch.11 "Four Objections to the Concept of Soundscape"
- Voegelin, Sonic Possible Worlds (1-25)
- Keywords - Acoustics + Echo
Listening
- This American Life, Mapping - Act 2 Hearing
- The Sound of Life: What is a Soundscape? (part 2)
- Sounds from Dangerous Places (Field Recording as Sonic Journalism)
- The Field Recordist
Suggested
- Leppert, "Reading the Sonoric Landscape" SSR
- Rath, "No Corner for the Devil to Hide" SSR
- Coole, "The Inertia of Matter" New Materialisms
- Ingold, "Against Space" Being Alive (Ch. 12)
- Ingold, "Bringing Things Back to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials"
- Ingold, Being Alive Ch.1 Prologue (esp. sections on dwelling and lines), Ch.6 "Point, Line, Counter-Point" (esp. sections on Uexkull and Heidegger)
- Johnstone, "Greek Oratorical Settings and the Problem of the Pnyx"
- The World's First 'Acoustically Perfect' Concert Hall opens in Germany
- Chichen Itza Chirp
- Ancient Maya Temples Were Giant Loudspeakers?
- Links - Soundscapes
Week 4 – Noise (2013)
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R Feb 6
- Gunn, et al. "Auscultating Again: Rhetoric and Sound Studies" RSQ (2013)
- LaBelle, "Auditory Relations" SSR
- Attali, "Noise: The Political Economy of Music" SSR
- Serres, "Noise"
- Novak, Japanoise Ch.1 excerpt
- Orlie, "Impersonal Matter" New Materialisms
- Keywords - Noise + Deafness
Listening
- Daniel Rozenhall, "The Suffering of Saws" (Swedish Noise Installation)
- Novak, Japanoise Supplemental Media
- Deaf Artist Christine Sun Kim Is Reinventing Sound (TED)
- Kadenze Artist of the Month: Zimoun
- From The Rumbles Of A Sewage Plant, An Experimental Symphony
- Harry Bertoia - Clear Sounds/Perfetta
Suggested
- Bijsterveld, "Listening to Machines" SSR
- LaBelle, Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art
- Kahn, Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts
- Lockwood, "Spread the Virus: Affective Prophecy in Industrial Music" Sound, Music, Affect
- Hegarty, "Brace the Embrace: Masochism in Noise Performance" Sound, Music, Affect
- Borgo, “Ghost in the Machine”
- Rev. of Novak Japanoise
- Overload Collapse - Live Tokyo
- Moore, "Experimental Music in Singapore"
- All Technology Is Assistive: Six Design Rules on 'Disability'
- Lina Selander, "27 Kilometer Drawing" (Swedish Sound Art)
- Daniel Skoglund, "Sketches and Routines" (Swedish Sound Art)
- Links - Noise
Week 5 – Short Paper 1
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R Feb 13
In Class
- Individual paper presentations.
- Download/Setup Audacity - Open Source Audio Editing Software (also here).
- LAME plugin for Audacity so you can export MP3s (scroll down the FAQ page).
- Audacity Hack: Respond verbally to one of the presentations in under 1 minute via Audacity--record, edit, save, export, upload (see Audacity Intro as needed).
- Links - Audacity
Week 6 – Publics (2013)
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R Feb 20
- Ahern, "Tuning the Sonic Playing Field: Teaching Ways of Knowing Sound in First Year Writing" Computers and Composition (2013)
- Stone and Ceraso, “Sonic Rhetorics” Special Issue of Harlot (2013) - Intro + Pick One:
- Edwards, "Finding Nowhere"
- Ahern and Frith "Speaking Back to Our Spaces: The Rhetoric of Social Soundscaping"
- Langreck, "Shane Leonard: Sonic Traditions in Eau Claire, WI"
- Stedman, "Making Meaning in Musical Mixes"
- Barber, "Audiobiography: A Sonic Memoir of the 1960s"
- Dorwick, "Two Sound Pieces"
- Vogel, "Recitative: The Persuasive Tenor of Jazz Culture"
- Lambke, "The Oral Aural Walter Ong"
- Lawrence, "The Quiet, Wintry North: Digital Folk of the Upper Peninsula"
- Goodman, Sonic Warfare (Chs. 2, 5, 7, 34)
- Latour, "From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik"
- Frost, "Fear and the Illusion of Autonomy" New Materialisms
- Keywords - Listening + Body
Listening
- Boone, The Sounds of Protest are Getting Louder
- Novak, Podcast: The Sounds of Japan's Antinuclear Movement
- Jurgenson, Occupy Audio: The Soundscape of the Protests
Suggested
- Berland, "Contradicting Media" SSR
- Gitelmann, "The Phonograph's New Media Publics" SSR
- Fannon, "This is the Voice of Algeria" SSR
- Hilmes, "Radio and the Imagined Community" SSR
- Gautier, ". . . The Aural Public Sphere in Latin America" SSR
- Calls from Home: Prison Radio in Appalachia
- Deaville, "The Envoicing of Protest"
- The Map That Lets You Listen to the Radio Everywhere
- This Rhetorical Life Ep.24 - On Ferguson
- This Rhetorical Life Ep.22 - (Social) Media Representations of Venezuela Protests
- Halbritter, Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers (2013)
- Links - Publics
Week 7 – Cities (2014)
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R Feb 27
- Ceraso, “(Re)Educating the Senses: Multimodal Listening, Bodily Learning, and the Composition of Sonic Experiences” College English (2014)
- Labelle, Acoustic Territories (Ch.2 43-65, 74-84)
- Ouzounian, "Acoustic Mapping" The Acoustic City
- Royaards, "The Space Between" The Acoustic City
- Cobussen, "Towards a 'New' Sonic Ecology"
- Moore and Smallwood, "The Soundscape of Burning Man" Soundsscape 11
- Connolly, "Materialities of Experience" New Materialisms
- Keywords - Space + Silence
Listening
- Ceraso, A Tale of Two Soundscapes
- Thompson, The Roaring Twenties
- Acoustic City
Suggested
- Thompson, "Sound, Modernity, and History" SSR
- Novak, Listening to Kamagasaki
- Invisible Places, Sounding Cities: Sound, Urbanism, and Sense of Place (Proceedings)
- Journal of Sonic Studies 10
- Listening to the City of Light: An interview with Sound Recordist Des Coulam
- Glennie, How to Truly Listen - TED Talk (drums, xylophone, website)
- Links - Cities
Week 8 – Technologies (2015)
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R Mar 5
- Alexander, "Glenn Gould and the Rhetorics of Sound," Computers and Composition (2015)
- Lastra, "Fidelity v. Intelligibility" SSR
- Mowitt, "The Sound of Music in the Era of its Reproducibility" SSR
- Meintjes, "The Recording Studio as Fetish" SSR
- Sterne, MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Ch.6 "Is Music a Thing?" 184-197, 218-226)
- Law and Singleton, "Object Lessons"
- Grosz, “Feminism, Materialism, Freedom” New Materialisms
- Keywords - Phonography + Radio
Listening
- Gould, The Idea of North 2 (radio cut)
- Gould, The Idea of North (full TV doc)
- Roman Mars, "You are Listening to + Radio Net" (You are Listening to)
- Musique Concrete
Suggested
- Pinch and Troco, "Shaping the Synthesizer" SSR
- Kittler, "Gramophone" SSR
- Sterne, "The MP3 as Cultural Artifact"
- Sterne Interview: MP3 Format
- The Ghost in the MP3
- Is It Live, or Is It Memorex
- Law, Aircraft Stories ("Intro" and "Objects")
- Links - Technologies
March 8-15 – Spring Break
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Week 9 – Short Paper 2
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R Mar 19
In Class
- Upload SP.2 and revisions to SP.1 to Dropbox.
- Make a pass at the letter remake and upload to Dropbox.
Week 10 – Archive and Ontology (2015)
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R Mar 26
- Stone, “Listening to the Sonic Archive: Rhetoric, Representation, and Race in the Lomax Prison Recordings” Enculturation (2015)
- Anderson, “Toward a Resonant Material Vocality for Digital Composition” Enculturation (2014)
- Stanyek and Piekut, "Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane" SSR
- Goodman, "The Ontology of Vibrational Force" SSR
- Eshun, "Operating System for the Redesign of Sonic Reality" SSR
- Jasen, Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience (intro, ch1, ch5 157-77, conclusion)
- Chow, “The Elusive Material” New Materialisms
- Keywords - Music + Synthesis
Listening
- Travelling the Spaceways: The Cult of Sun Ra (BBC Radio)
- Thomas Stanley, Mind over Matter, Music over Mind (Brian)
- Mind over Matter, Music over Mind - Conundrum
- Black's Myths
- Black's Myths II
Suggested
- Eshun, "Further Considerations on Afrofuturism"
- Rev. of The Execution of Sun Ra, by Thomas Stanley (and here)
- Rev. of Black's Myths II
- Hawk, "Gesture Ecologies: Sound Art as Compositional Practice"
- Musical Objects, Variability, and Live Electronic Performance
- Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, The New Memory Palace
- Weheliye, "Desiring Machines in Black Popular Culture" SSR
- Goodman, Sonic Warfare (Chs. 1, 4, 11, 22, 29, 30)
- Schulze, Sonic Fiction
- Kennedy, Future Sounds: The Temporality of Noise
- Roholt, Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance
- Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness (PDF)
- Jones, "Tryna Fee Kansas City" (on Janelle Monae)
- Janelle Monae's Afrofuture (2020)
- Influences of Afrofuturism on Janelle Monae (2018)
- A Purplish Haze: The Science Fiction Vision of Jimi Hendrix (2017)
- Afrofuturism takes Flight: From Sun Ra to Janelle Monae (2014)
- Sun Ra - Night Music 1989
- Sun Ra Interview (Helsinki, 1971)
- Sun Ra Arkestra, Face the Music / Space is the Place
- Wikipedia: Afrofuturism
- Links - Archive
Week 11 – Anthropocene (2016)
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R Apr 2
- Comstock and Hocks "The Sounds of Climate Change: Sonic Rhetoric in the Anthropocene, the Age of Human Impact" Rhetoric Review (2016)
- Droumeva, "Soundmapping as Critical Cartography: Engaging Publics in Listening to the Environment"
- Jones, "Sonic Ecology" The Acoustic City (bats)
- Minotou et al., "Listening to the Ecosystem of the Turtle" Soundsscape 11
- Alaimo, "Trans-Corporeal Feminism and the Ethical Space of Nature" Material Feminisms
- Braidotti, "The Politics of 'Life Itself'" New Materialisms
- Keywords - Acoustemology + Transduction
Listening
- Close Listening: How Sound Reveals The Invisible
- Soundstage - Glacial Melt
- Pisaro and Stuart, Congaree Nomads (CDs)
- Krause, The Voice of the Natural World
- Invisibilia, The Last Sound (episode on Krause)
- Scientists Translate Coronavirus Spike Protein into Music
Suggested
- Pisaro, Ten Framing Considerations of the Field
- Farrier, Deep Time's Uncanny Future is full of Ghostly Human Traces
- Ernst, "Intro" Sonic Time Machines
- Cecchetto, Ch.4 Humanesis
- Krause, The Great Animal Orchestra
- Dyson, The Tone of Our Times: Sound, Sense, Economy, and Ecology
- Review of Humanesis
- Alaimo, Intro Bodily Natures
- Bennett, "A Vitalist Stopover" New Materialisms
- Barad, "Posthuman Performativity"
- Woods, "Scale Critique for the Anthropocene"
- Kohn, "Introduction" How Forests Think
- Deep Mining, Deep Time - Rev. of Parikka's The Anthrobscene
- The Humanities After Humanism
- A Rare Language of Whistles
- A Transfixing Audiovisual Dive into Varieties of Emergence
- Links - Anthropocene
Week 12 – Resonance + the Virtual (2017)
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R Apr 9
- Hawk and Stuart, "English Composition as a Sonic Practice" (2017)
- Hocks and Comstock, "Composing for Sound: Sonic Rhetoric as Resonance" (2017)
- Hawk, "Sound: Resonance as Rhetorical" (2018)
- Bost and Greene, "Affirming Rhetorical Materialism"
- Panzner, The Process that is the World (Ch.1)
- Cheah, "Non-Dialectical Materialism" New Materialisms
- Keywords - Resonance
Listening
- Cage, Song Book
- John Cage, 4'33''
- Pisaro and Stuart, A Mist is a Collection of Points
- Pisaro and Stuart, Ricefall (video)
- Schaeffer, Etude Aux Chemins De Fer
- Chion, La Ronde (excerpt)
Suggested
- Holland, "Studies in Applied Nomadology: Jazz Improvization and Post-Capitalist Markets"
- Buchanon, Deleuze and Music
- Hulse and Nesbitt, Sounding the Virtual
- Ikoniadou, The Rhythmic Event
- Kahn, "Noises of the Avant-Garde" SSR
- Rogers, "Toward a Feminist Historiogrphay of Electronic Music" SSR
- Erlmann, Reason and Resonance
- Massumi, Undigesting Deleuze
- Spinoza in a T-Shirt
- Interview with Joe Panzner
- Hawk, Rhetoricity Interview: "The Shape of Composition to Come"
- Real-Life Schrödinger’s Cats Probe the Boundary of the Quantum World (decoherence as resonance)
- Earth Is Vibrating Substantially Less Because There's So Little Activity Right Now (anthropogenic noise and entanglement)
- Links - Virtual
Week 13 – Sonic Pedagogies (2018) + Short Paper 3
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R Apr 16
- Danforth, Stedman, and Faris, eds., Soundwriting Pedagogies (2018)
- Ahern, Rev. of Sounding Composition (2018/2020)
- VanKooten, Singer, Writer: A Choric Exploration of Sound and Writing (2016)
- Rodrigue, et al, Navigating the Soundscape, Composing with Audio (2016)
Suggested
- Lingold et al, eds. Digital Sound Studies (2018)
- Ceraso, Featured Courses
- Detweiler, Rhetoric and Sound Studies (grad syllabus)
- Hawk, Writing with Sound (ug syllabus)
- Boyle, Writing with Sound (ug syllabus)
Writing
- Write SP.3 and upload to Dropbox.
- In this SP I want you to focus on the readings from this section but apply them to either 1) how you think you'll incorporate sound into your academic research or 2) how you will incorporate sound into your teaching. (Hint: this SP will in a sense be your entryway into the final paper.)
Week 14 – Podcasts
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R Apr 23
Reading/Listening
- Tools for Podcasting
- This Rhetorical Life, Ep.28 - Podcasting
- Radiolab Behind the Scenes
- Radiolab's Jad Abumrad On Storytelling With Sound
- What Ira Glass Explains In 1 Minute Will Change Your Life Forever
- Up and Vanished (Listen to Case Evidence 01-09-17 where he interviews Accused podcasters)
Podcasts
- Rhetoricity
- This Rhetorical Life
- Mere Rhetoric
- Plugs, Play, Pedagogy
- Rhetorical Questions
- CCC Podcasts
- Sweetland Podcasts
- UK Podcasts
Suggested
- With S-Town, Podcasts Come of Age
- S-Town is a stunning podcast. It probably shouldn't have been made
- How S-Town is upending the art of podcasting
- Professor featured in S-Town gives his take on hit podcast – and its central mystery
- How 'S-Town' Fails Black Listeners
- How to Create a Powerful Podcast
- There's a Podcast for That(Scene on Radio)
- This 28-Hour Beatles Podcast Is a New Kind of Historical Fanzine
- Podcasts in RC (Facebook page by Eric D.)
- Prolific: Rhetoric, Composition, Technical Communication
- Writing, Education, Technology
- Purdue OWL
- UW Madison WC
- Links - Podcasts
Writing
- Develop a podcast episode or experimental sound project using field recordings, downloaded sounds, and/or recordings of your own narration/voice. Base your sound project on SP.3 and how you think you'll use sound in either your research or teaching--if you plan to teach podcasts, make an episode; if you plan on doing field recordings for your research, make one of those; etc.
- Sound Projects Due - Friday May 1 by midnight. Upload to Dropbox.
Week 15 – Exam Week
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Apr 27 – May 1
- Work on final papers, essentially extending SP.3 into a longer paper.
- Final Papers Due - Friday May 8 by midnight. Upload to Dropbox.