Worlds of Sound: Learning to Listen

We live in a world of sound. Even deafening silence has a profound sonic quality. In ways that we do not always recognize, our social practices lead us to understand certain sounds as desired signals and filter out others as unwanted noise. How are we hearing the world right now? How have the Coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the other developments of 2020 changed the world of sound in which we live? How have they changed the ways we listen? This class challenges freshmen to become aware of their own listening practices and how those practices affect their perception of the world. We think about how our bodies, our technology, the state, and the market affect what and how we hear. We explore what makes us remember some sounds more than others. Students in this class will write about their own experiences of listening as they develop their own archive of the sounds of Fall 2020; they will produce autoethnographic writing that they can use later to remember this unique historical moment.