New Books Network
Sound Studies
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 …

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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 …
Middle Eastern Studies 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 …
Music 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 …
Film 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 …
Caribbean Studies June 23, 2020

Isles of Noise

Sonic Media in the Caribbean

Alejandra Bronfman

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
The Caribbean has figuratively and literally been entangled in processes of global integration earlier than other parts of the Americas. In Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean (UNC …
Music May 14, 2020

Digital Sampling

The Design and Use of Music Technologies

Paul Harkins

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
How does technology shape music? In Digital Sampling: The Design and Use of Music Technologies (Routledge, 2019), Paul Harkins, a lecturer in music at Edinburgh Napier University, looks at the …
Music April 15, 2020

Sonic Writing

Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions

Thor Magnusson

Hosted by Eamonn Bell
In Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), Thor Magnusson (@thormagnusson)--musician, Professor of Future Music, and member of the Experimental Music Technologies Lab at the …
Music March 16, 2020

Connecting Sounds

The Social Life of Music

Nick Crossley

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
What does music tell us about society? In Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music (Manchester University Press, 2020), Nick Crossley, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, introduces …
Music February 5, 2020

Decomposed

The Political Ecology of Music

Kyle Devine

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
What is the human and environmental cost of music? In Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (MIT Press, 2019), Kyle Devine, an Associate Professor in the Department of Musicology at …
Music November 4, 2019

The Race of Sound

Listening, Timbre and Vocality in African American Music

Nina Eidsheim

Hosted by Kristen Turner
In 2018, Nicolle R. Holliday and Daniel Villarreal published the results of a study they conducted asking people to rank how “black” President Obama sounded when given four different examples …
Southeast Asian Studies September 30, 2019

Bangkok is Ringing

Sound, Protest, and Constraint

Benjamin Tausig

Hosted by Patrick Jory
The political protests of the “Red Shirts” movement in Thailand in April-May 2010 ended in tragedy, with the security forces killing over 90 people and injuring thousands more. Thailand’s political …
Music February 7, 2019

Hearing Beethoven

A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery

Robin Wallace

Hosted by Kristen Turner
Music lovers and researchers alike have long been fascinated by the story of Ludwig van Beethoven who became profoundly deaf as an adult and could not hear some of his …
African Studies January 2, 2019

Sounding Islam

Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World

Patrick Eisenlohr

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World (University of California Press, 2018) by Patrick Eisenlohr is an exciting ethnographic study of Mauritian Muslims’ soundscapes. Through …