New Books Network
Sound Studies
Psychology January 4, 2022

Havana Syndrome

Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria

Robert W. Baloh and Robert E. Bartholomew

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
It is one of the most extraordinary cases in the history of science: the mating calls of insects were mistaken for a “sonic weapon” that led to a major diplomatic …

Sound Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Sound Studies about their new books.

Science November 26, 2021

Of Sound Mind

How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World

Nina Kraus

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. In Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World (MIT Press …
Science, Technology, and Society November 16, 2021

Alien Listening

Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth

Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding

Hosted by Sarah Kearns
In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world …
Latino Studies October 21, 2021

Sounds of Crossing

Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño

Alex E. Chávez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke UP, 2017), Alex E. Chávez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the …
Architecture October 19, 2021

Echo's Chambers

Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space

Joseph L. Clarke

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
A room’s acoustic character seems at once the most technical and the most mystical of concerns. Since the early Enlightenment, European architects have systematically endeavored to represent and control the …
Critical Theory August 4, 2021

Sonic Intimacy

Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos

Malcolm James

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
How can music change the world? In Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury, 2020), Malcolm James, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies …
Ideas Roadshow Podcast July 30, 2021

The Science of Siren Songs

Stradivari Unveiled

Joseph Curtin

Hosted by Howard Burton
The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and master violinmaker and acoustician Joseph Curtin, recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship …
Dan Hill's EQ Spotlight May 27, 2021

My Robot Gets Me

How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human

Carla Diana

Hosted by Dan Hill
Today I talked to Carla Diana about her new book My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). Carla Diana is …
Music May 21, 2021

From Music to Sound

The Emergence of Sound in 20th and 21st-century Music

Makis Solomos

Hosted by Eamonn Bell
In From Music to Sound: The Emergence of Sound in 20th and 21st-century Music (Routledge, 2019), Makis Solomos (Professor of Musicology, University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis “Paris 8”) argues that …
Christian Studies April 8, 2021

Singing the Congregation

How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community

Monique M. Ingalls

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The choices that churches make about their musical style do more than simply change the sounds one hears in their gatherings, but actually form certain kinds of community. So Monique …
Islamic Studies April 2, 2021

Ambient Sufism

Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form

Richard C. Jankowsky

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form (University of Chicago Press, 2021) by Richard C. Jankowsky (an Associate Professor of music at Tufts University) is a …
Music March 16, 2021

Stereophonica

Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts

Gascia Ouzounian

Hosted by Eamonn Bell
As common as it is today to speak of the relative “height” of musical pitches or of the sense of “vocal space” as it opened up by particular recording techniques …
Christian Studies December 30, 2020

Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking

Mark James Porter

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Mark Porter (@mrmarkporter) explores the relationship between music, sound, space, and spirit in his new book Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking (Oxford University Press, 2020). Using the analytical tools …
Science, Technology, and Society December 11, 2020

Sensory Experiments

Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling

Erica Fretwell

Hosted by Chad Valasek
We so often take our senses as natural, but perhaps we should understand them as historically situated. Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race and the Aesthetics of Feeling (Duke University Press, 2020) allows us …
Caribbean Studies October 14, 2020

Audible Geographies in Latin America

Sounds of Race and Place

Dylon Robbins

Hosted by Alejandra Bronfman
What is the relationship between race, technology and sound? How can we access the ways that Latin Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries thought about, and importantly, heard …
Mobilities and Methods September 28, 2020

Street Sounds

Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

Ziad Fahmy

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder …
Dan Hill's EQ Spotlight September 10, 2020

The Power of Music

Psychoanalytic Explorations

Roger Kennedy

Hosted by Dan Hill
Today I discussed why music so powerful in eliciting emotions with Roger Kennedy, the author of The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations (Phoenix Publishing House, 2020) Now at The Child …
Music August 12, 2020

Hush

Media and Sonic Self-Control

Mack Hagood

Hosted by Eamonn Bell
How have we used twentieth- and twenty-first-century sound technologies to carve out sonic space out of the hustle and bustle of contemporary life? In search for an answer, in this …
Music July 7, 2020

Animal Musicalities

Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening

Rachel Mundy

Hosted by Eamonn Bell
“What makes song sparrows, Verdi, medieval monks, and minstrelsy part of the same taxonomy?” So asks—and answers—Rachel Mundy, who is Assistant Professor of Music at Rutgers University–Newark. In her book …
Music July 6, 2020

Music for the Kingdom of Shadows

Cinema Accompaniment in the Age of Spiritualism

Kendra Preston Leonard

Hosted by Kristen Turner
We might call movies made before the advent of the talkies in 1927 silent films—but for the audience, they were certainly not silent. Live orchestras and solo instrumentalists accompanied early …