This two-day symposium will forge new lines of inquiry and dialogue in the study of sound and society under state socialism. Scholars from history, music, literature, film, and media studies will share recent work on regions of the globe from the Caribbean to East Asia where the revolutionary reshaping of political and social relations has had far-reaching effects on the way people hear the world around them. In the course of the conference, we will ask: how are political ideologies made audible? What are the material conditions, media networks, and sensory attunements that underpin state control of the means of sound production? And what might a “socialist sound studies” look or sound like?
Recent decades have witnessed a “sonic turn” across the humanities and social sciences, as sound is increasingly recognized as a generative resource for historical, aesthetic, and ethnographic research. In keeping with sound’s unruly capacity for bleeding through walls and bridging distances between people and places, this gathering will encourage conversations across regional and disciplinary boundaries. While the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China continue to play outsize roles in our understanding of state-socialist political formations, there is much to be heard in the transnational, peripheral, and intermedial spaces in which socialist ideas have flourished.
The symposium will include panels featuring eight invited speakers, commentary from University of Pittsburgh faculty, and a keynote address by Andrea Bohlman, Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Co-sponsored by:
Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies | Department of Music | Department of History | Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures | World History Center | European Studies Center | Global Studies Center | Asian Studies Center | Center for African Studies | Department of History of Art & Architecture | Department of English