“If there is a space of thinking, either real or virtual, then within it there must also be sound, for all sound seeks its expression as vibration in the medium of space,” writes Bill Viola. We think of narrative as being with “space”  and, while we understand literature as being with a poetics and rhetoric, we do not ask after its acoustics. What, then, is narrative acoustics? In a triple gesture, it is the making of narrative space by sound, the virtual hearing of sounds in narrative and intertextual space, and the narrative of sonic change. This talk takes us through some of the acoustical-narrative spaces of Flaubert, James, Faulkner, Ellison, and Hitchcock.

At 5:15pm in Lerner Center 102, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Music, Graduate Student Colloquium Series

I am excited to be speaking at this event on Friday June 2 on the media crosscurrents panel. My paper, titled “Music’s Unseen Body,” locates in Heart of Darkness the erotic echoes of Conrad’s experiences of listening to opera and the phonograph. In the sound space of the novel, I find resonances with W.E.B. Du Bois’ contemporary writings of opera, as well as a fore-echo of the American reception of Conrad by queer composer Henry Cowell.

To register for the conference, follow this link:

http://www.josephconrad.org/Upcoming-Conferences/Conradian-Crosscurrents/conradian-crosscurrents.html

http://www.centreforexpandedpoetics.com/events-1/2017/6/12/structure

In this post for Modernism/modernity, I reflect on how how modernist scholarship can respond to the present.

Source: Modernism Ungoverned

The Politics of the Musical Situation: A Response to Marina Rosenfeld

From continent Issue 5.3 / 2016 “Acoustic Infrastructures“

I’m pleased to participate in “Techniques of the Listener,” convened by the Yale Sound Studies Working Group. We hope to write a collective essay on the proceedings.

About Techniques of the Listener

“Techniques of the Listener” is a two day working group on audile techniques, supported by a Humanity/Humanities grant from Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center.

Our goal is to collectively examine, develop, and refine the notion of “audile techniques” from both practical and theoretical angles. The sessions are not public; rather they are designed to maximize conversation, exchange, and collective thinking.

We hope to approach the idea of audile technique both intensively and extensively. Intensively, we want to look at particular instances. By ranging across the disciplines, we hope to see how different cultural-historical situations are articulated and altered through the application of audile techniques. Each participant will present a short narrative of an audile technique, contemporary or historical, in hopes of building a small “sample set” of cases. By considering these cases we aim to study audile techniques both individually and comparatively. We hope to broaden and refine our understanding of what kinds of practices should be included under the heading of an audile technique.

Extensively, we seek to better understand the nature of audile techniques generally. Can we make inroads on developing a theory of audile techniques? Are current theories of audile techniques sufficient for illuminating and generalizing over individual cases? How do techniques, at once, organize and respond to the relays, successions, and recursive loops of auditory aspects of human experience?  Bringing the two approaches together, we seek to clarify the structure and nature of technique, while also remaining sensitive to the specific ways audile techniques are integrated with audio technologies and other sensory techniques.

After our two day meeting, we will make public the outcome and implications of the conversations.

Conveners:

J.D. Connor (Yale, Art History and Film Studies)
Ben Glaser (Yale, English)
Brian Kane (Yale, Music)