Noise in Literature

Catalog description

How does noise affect the way we perceive the world? How do writers translate their acoustic environments through their work? This course explores the vexed and vexing concept of noise in literature and culture. Students will consider the creative value of noise in literature across time and space through depictions of bustling cityscapes, the din of warfare, clattering factories, and grinding machinery. What types of sonic cues are gendered, racialized, or class-coded? Students will place literary representations of noise in their broader cultural and historical contexts, as they put close readings in dialogue with larger phenomena. Theoretical and critical readings will complement literary texts, music, and sound art, allowing students to blend literary analysis with the interdisciplinary field of sound studies. In addition to reading, hearing, and discussing how authors translate sound into text, students will explore their own acoustic surroundings through "soundwalks" and write about them in creative "sonic translation" projects to better understand the creative potential of noise in literature.