The Interruption of the Machine: Introduction to Sound Studies through Literature

This course will introduce students to the field of Sound Studies (methodology, vocabulary, main claims) with a focus on the various sonic articulations of human-machine interactions in literature. The world of fiction as a sonic machine that articulates noise, sound, music, voice, or silence offers an excellent archive. We will read works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Eça de Queirós, Mark Twain, the Italian Futurists, Zora Neale Hurston, and Luigi Pirandello. Secondary readings will include seminal contributions by R. Murray Schafer (the soundscape), Leo Marx (U.S. industrialization), Jacques Attali (noise and music), Mladen Dolar (philosophy and voice), Adriana Cavarero (gender, voice, and the body), Jonathan Crary (culture, aesthetics, and perception), Friedrich Kittler (media), and Daphne Brooks (black feminist sound).