SHUM 4965 - The History of Pre-Industrial Noise in Europe, 1400-1800

(crosslisted)
(also HIST 4965)

Spring. 4 credits.

Limited to 15 students.

D. Corpis

This seminar investigates the political, social, and cultural meanings of “noise” in early-modern Europe in order to assess whether noise can have a history. How did the meanings, perceptions, and effects of noise change over time, especially in a period that experienced major transformations in religious practices, scientific knowledge, urban life, political state formation, and Europe’s relationship to the rest of the world? Did such immense changes affect how Europeans listened to the world around them, or how and what they heard? How did early modern Europeans use noise as a way of assigning meanings, differences, distinctions, and hierarchies? We begin with a series of readings that theorize the social, cultural, and political dimensions of sound and noise. Next, we turn to a series of specific case studies that explore how dissonant noise was imagined from the Reformation through the Enlightenment. Did the hustle and bustle of pre-modern cities sound different from modern, post-industrial cities? How did competing religions (mis)understand the aural dimensions of sacred rites performed by their religious competitors? Why were regional dialects or foreign languages from around the world described as barbaric or uncouth? What role did early-modern science play in changing assumptions about sound and noise?