What's in a Sound? Gender and Race in Sound Cultures

Catalog description

What can we hear or even see in a sound? Can the sound of a voice conjure traces of a body? How does sound construct gender and race? In this course, we will consider how listening, voicing, and music-making operate as mechanisms of representation. We will pay particular attention to the work that sonic representations perform and their connections to systems of power and identity. From reggaet?nd Brazilian funk to voiceovers and machine listening, we will attune our ears to contemporary popular cultures in the Americas, listening closely to how they represent gender and race in relation to other social categories. No prior musical training is required. (MUSIC-HC)