What is sound? Is it a physical set of properties? Is it an individual experience? Is it a cross-cultural phenomenon? Sound is tremendously influential in human experience and yet research studies in social science have often downplayed sound in comparison to other senses such as sight. This course joins a growing chorus in sound studies that examines how sound worlds are constructed through cultural, political, economic, aesthetic, and performative contexts. This course will explore sound's many nuanced dimensions including the constitution of and criticism surrounding soundscapes, cultural constructions of silence and noise, the creation of acoustic communities, contentious politics of hearing, and the use of sound to conduct science. The course will also explore topics in musical performance including current drives toward democratized music making or "musicking," commercialized appropriation of music, and the technologization of music through digital sampling. Students will engage in personal acoustic explorations and observations that reveal cultural constructions and experiences of sound. By the end of the course, students will develop analytical tools for conceptualizing sound and they will be more attuned to the sounds all around them.

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