The Anthropology of Sound
Examines the ways humans experience sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. Consider how the sound/noise/music boundaries have been imagined, created, and modeled across sociocultural and historical contexts. Learn how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally as well as the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, multi-channel and spatial mix performance, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of sound ownership, property, authorship, remix, and copyright in the digital age are also addressed.
Spring 2022
This course examines the ways humans experience sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. It considers how the sound/noise/music boundaries have been imagined, created, and modeled across sociocultural and historical contexts. Students will learn how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally as well as the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, multi-channel and spatial mix performance, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of sound ownership, property, authorship, remix, and copyright in the digital age are also addressed.
Readings
- Feld, Steven. “A Rainforest Acoustemology.” Chapter 12 in The Auditory Culture Reader . 1 st ed. Edited by Michael Bull and Les Back. Berg Publishers, 2004. ISBN: 9781859736180.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as CMS.406[J] , STS.065[J] Prereq: None U (Fall) 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2022
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.