Cult Pol of Sound LA/Spain

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

In the last few years the field of Sound Studies has emerged as a new way to understand culture and politics. Some topics of interest include popular music and the mechanisms of its circulation, such as radio, mp3s, and online videos; the production and meaning of soundtracks, accents, and sound effects in film; and the literary and historical depiction of soundscapes we experience in our daily lives. Studies in this area have shown that sounds we take for granted—industrial and natural noise, ring tones, vocal inflections and accents, even the styles of certain musical genres—are in fact implicated in wider historical and ideological frameworks that reflect beliefs about race, gender, class, and other political categories. With this in mind, in this course, we will take a Sound Studies approach to 20th- and 21st-century Iberian and Latin American culture. In addition to reading key theoretical texts on sound, we will examine how specific novels, films, podcasts, radio programs, and websites from contemporary Spain and Latin America reflect political beliefs about sound and society.