Sound, Technology, and Power

4 credits · Graduate

This seminar queries the relation between sound, technology, and power. Taking these three keywords/concepts as broad starting points, we will engage with theoretical approaches and case studies that span the emergence of recording technologies at the turn of the 19th century to algorithmic and robotic systems in the present. We will consider the avenues through which difference is represented, constructed, unsettled, and disturbed in music, films, archives, engineering, and software, among others. We will approach these matters from a variety of perspectives (e.g. Latin American, Chicanx, feminist, and Black radical intellectual genealogies) and academic disciplines (science, ethnic, media, cultural, border, and indigenous studies).