PMA 6818 - Race, Performance, Sound Studies

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

C. Balance.

This course engages with new and foundational writings in sound studies that center the racialized body – be it of the performer, listener, or critic – as well as racialized histories, places, and practices. This interdisciplinary course will study methodological tools, critical concepts, and readings drawn from queer, feminist, black, Latinx, Asian American, and postcolonial approaches, to name a few. We will engage with the role of sound and its technologies throughout U.S. history (i.e. slavery, wars and empire, social movements, immigration & migration, militarism) as well as the ways in which racialized performers, listeners, and critics have labored within and against these sonic regimes, imagining new politics, practices, and ways of being.