Experience one of our recent Humanities Forum events
Humanities Forum (click to see the full playlist)
Media and Communication Studies 10th Anniversary Event, March 1, 2018
Listening to Racism in the United States – or Why Sound Matters
Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Associate Professor of English, State University of New York at Binghamton
We talk too often about race and racism as if they are solely visual concepts. Jennifer Stoever’s lecture will unsettle the assumed relationship between race and looking by introducing the concept of the sonic color line and exploring the often undetected ways in which sound and listening have also functioned to produce and enforce racial hierarchies throughout U.S. history and in our present moment. Stoever argues that sound matters in our everyday lives and that we can work to shift our historically and culturally conditioned listening practices toward a more equitable world.