American Soundscapes

How do the United States take shape acoustically? How do sounds and music, noises and silences render individual and collective identities and subject positions? How do they address intersectional differences? What are the technological, economic, and/or sociocultural preconditions under which voices can be heard or listened to in the first place? How are these voices dispersed, amplified, or muted? Listening to the United States, this volume explores both the sociocultural production and the performativity of American soundscapes in different historical, regional, and medial contexts: from the strategic use of music in international politics during the Cold War, acoustic renderings of climate change in theater, and the articulation of sounds and silences in poetry, to the significance of noise in the production of urban spaces, the role of songs and sounds in and for marginalized communities and the enunciation of voice and affect in activist writing.