.. “So I have heard The Hum… The rest of what I’m about to tell you is beyond reasoning, and understanding.” Here, in a Reddit post, Michael A. Sweeney prefaces their story of their first encounter with “the hum,” an unexplained phenomenon heard by only a small percentage of listeners around the world. The hum is an ominous sonic event that impacts communities from Australia to India, Scotland to the United States. And as Geoff Leventhall writes in “Low Frequency Noise: What We Know, What We Do Not Know, and What We Would Like to Know,” the hum causes “considerable problems” for people across ..read more

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. –Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five On an almost visceral level, we may likewise remark that states of “latency” involve downward movement, as in the case of something falling by the wayside and lying unnoticed until its presence is felt. — Hans Gumbrecht, After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present Sometime last year, during a recent deep clean of the apartment, I pulled out a wooden chest that my father built for me when I was ten, a pine-scented time capsule of that period of my life, full of assorted construction-paper projects and faded ..read more

“Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted.” “Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted.” “Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted.” I am not a board games person, yet I always seem to find myself surrounded by them. Such was the case one August evening in 2023, during a round of the bird-watching-inspired game, Wingspan. Released in 2019 by Stonemaier Games, designer Elizabeth Hargrave’s creation is credited with a dramatic shift in the board game industry. The game received an unparalleled number of awards, including the prestigious 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisse ..read more

Still of the sensory map from The Pandemic Sensory Archive When the COVID-19 global pandemic began, news reports and studies throughout the world began citing a lot of sound-based statistics: drastic reductions in noise pollution in urban centres, AI recordings of cellphone coughs, shifting soundscapes at home with new routines and work settings, and sonic sensitivities cultivated in quarantine and isolation. At the same time, in conjunction with these new research studies and areas of interest, there was an outpouring of calls for sound recordings and contributions to digital archival sound ..read more

Usually when we celebrate our year in review, we get a little bit loud. . .okay, well, maybe we get REAL loud! We’re not usually ones to shy away from joyous bombast, especially when celebrating the hard work of our writers and editors, and the deep relationship we have with our readers. We wouldn’t be here without your clicks, your sharing, and your inspiration, and we love the excitement of readers becoming writers. It’s our favorite! But we don’t want our joy and celebration to be drowned out by 2023’s many loudnesses. We’re starting off 2024 with neither a bang nor a wimper, but instead ..read more

or, Last Summer a DJ Saved My Life “Hip Hop does work that a lot of other things don’t do” Young Guru (viii). The way that we imagine English Studies, specifically Composition and Rhetoric (Comp/Rhet), today needs a radical shift. Specifically, we need new techniques for Writing Studies pedagogy to reach students in a more meaningful and contemporary fashion.  Todd Craig’s “K for the Way:” DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies (Utah State University Press, 2023) both documents the need for this shift and enacts it. Craig’s work enables us to recog ..read more

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fiel ..read more

***This post is co-written by Petra Rivera-Rideau  and Vanessa Díaz On the night of September 12, Colombian pop star Shakira made history as the first predominantly Spanish-language artist to be honored as MTV’s Video Vanguard at the Video Music Awards (VMAs). The award recognizes artists who have had a major and innovative impact on music videos and popular music. Shakira played a 10-minute medley of Spanish and English hits from her three-decades long career. Her performance demonstrated her breadth as an artist as she shifted from pop to rock to reggaetón. Not only did she demonstrate ..read more

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fiel ..read more

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger field ..read more