A Listening Mind: Sound Learning in a Literature Classroom
“Listening is little short of a synonym for learning.”
–Julian Henriques, Sonic Bodies
This is the third post in Sounding Out!’s July forum on listening in observation of World Listening Day on July 18th, 2013. World Listening Day is a time to think about the impacts we have on our auditory environments and, in turn, its affects on us. To read last week’s post by Maile Colbert click here and Regina Bradley’s discussion of listening, race, and Rachel Jeantel (and to read more about World Listening Day) click here.
—
How can listening, which I’ve come to understand as an essential way of knowing, enhance the learning experience? My pedagogical challenge over the past few years has been to develop a heightened awareness of the ways our ears are not necessarily, as Robert Frost asserts, “the only true reader and the only true writer,” but certainly an essential mode of reading and writing that is too often underdeveloped. As my high school students read works by Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Michael Ondaatje, Jonathan Safran Foer, James Baldwin, and Lucille Clifton, I want their ears to become increasingly attuned to the sounds, silences, vibrations, and other sonic significance embedded within printed words. I want them to experience how listening enhances their understanding of literature, that listening is learning.
“Writing” by Flickr user filipe ferreira, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
I’ve taught A Listening Mind, a trimester course for high school juniors at Princeton Day School in New Jersey, for two years. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s 1996 National Book Award acceptance speech, “The Dancing Mind,” the course title signals my interest in challenging students to practice writing and reading in ways that are collaborative and cognitively (and otherwise) dissonant with their usual English classroom habits of mind. For my students, at least initially, writing is ruled solely by the mantra “Show. Don’t Tell.” This course, then, creates preconditions for a new kind of learning. It aims to heighten students’ aural attentiveness in general, and particularly in relation to the sonic life that inhabits the lower frequencies of the printed word. In many ways, the class resonates with Liana Silva’s discussion of sound as significant to writing and learning. In this course, we grapple with essential questions such as: How might we read and write with our ears? What happens when we take the risk to do so? As I design assessments and moderate the course, I keep in mind my own essential question as an educator: How can my scholarly interest in listening as a significant mode of cultural and social engagement translate into sound study learning opportunities for my students? The assignments students complete in A Listening Mind, a few of which I share next, are my response to these questions–a response that is in constant development.
CULTIVATING A LISTENING MIND
On the first day of class, I play Jason Moran’s “Cradle Song” from his most recent album, Artist in Residence. Moran plays the Carl Maria von Weber-composed lullaby on unaccompanied piano; the urgent scratching of a closely miked pencil on paper writes slightly ahead of the calming melody.
The song, a tribute to Moran’s mother who would stand over his shoulder taking notes as Moran practiced piano as a child, amplifies a sonic life that more often lingers within the printed word. Thus, it allows us to begin exploring the possibilities of listening as an approach to reading and writing.
In the first month of the course, students practice low stakes listening and writing: they go on short listening walks and record by hand what they hear in their sound journals. Rutger Zuydervelt’s Take a Closer Listen, an excerpt from the opening pages of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and the New York Times Magazine prose and audio essay, “Whisper in the Wind” are our inspirations for this assignment. They visit a space in which they feel most like themselves and tune into the space’s acoustics. They do the same in a space where they are less comfortable. Students also tune their attention to eco-listening – listening with intention to the natural or man-made environments in which we find ourselves. The idea is to notice the sounds our ears have become deaf to as we’ve become accustomed to a space. Their eco-listening results in their creating individual listening booklets that record the sounds we hear and our occasional reflections on them. By listening to various sounds and in various ways during the early weeks of the course, students exercise their ears and, along the way, some even realize that you need more than just ears to listen.
“Listening Devices” by Flickr user abrinsky, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
SONIC MATERIAL CULTURE
One of the assignments of the course involves work in what I call “sonic material culture.” According to the University of Delaware’s Center for Material Culture Studies, the study of material cultural objects “promotes the learning from and the teaching about all things people make and the ways people have acted upon the physical and visible world.” But, what about the ways in which material culture impacts the audible world? Sonic material culture looks at how material cultural objects help create cultural meaning through the sounds they make and the ways in which people use those sounds. Students explored an array of “sonic objects” that included, among others, a Tibetan singing bowl, steel drum, Shofar, typewriter, stethoscope, and a boom box. They then chose one of the items – an item that either makes sound (like a steel drum) or allows for access to sound (like a stethoscope), and began their research with a specific focus on how this item holds sonic cultural significance.
To research the stethoscope, for example, one student interviewed a cardiologist and a medical historian. She learned that sounds doctors hear through the stethoscope “comprise a language, spelling out diagnoses and prognoses” and provide “gateways to our understanding of the heart.” Another student chose the Steel Drum, an instrument developed in the 20th century in Trinidad and Tobago, and ended up discussing the innovation involved in reusing oil containers to produce a new cultural sound. Another student’s research on the Tibetan Singing Bowl led him back to a moment in Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy: Book Three, Ptolemy’s Gate when the character Kitty Jones describes the ringing of a Singing Bowl that signals her transport into the world of magical spirits. Listening to the Singing Bowl made this student more attentive to this moment that he initially skimmed. And, one student’s love of all things vintage led her to her father’s manual typewriter and an essay combining family history and larger insights about education, workplaces, and mechanical writing. In each of these cases, the students realized that the sounds cannot be extricated from the material, social, and historical conditions that produce them.
SOUNDING HISTORY
The last time I taught the course, I designed a sound history mini-project. Students read excerpts from the work of Mark A. Smith and my work on historical listening in David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident, and considered these question: How might sound function as a way to narrate a specific historical moment? Students needed to choose a historical moment, locate a sound, and then create a museum card that, among others, answered the following key questions: What does this sound bring to our attention that we might not otherwise consider? What questions does this sound raise? What does it leave mute? Since students had watched Django Unchained recently, we discussed sounds of slavery in that film. If you write slavery through the crack of the whip, then your focus might be on violence and torture used during that peculiar past. If you tell slavery, though, from the code-laden singing enslaved persons used to send messages to flee, then you have a different frame, a different sonic way into the historical moment.
One student used the opening sounds from The Wizard of Oz to narrate the Dust Bowl. Another examined news reports and hip hop music to listen back to the Los Angeles Uprisings. One young woman interviewed her mother about her immigration experience from Guatemala; in her project, the sound of a train whistle signaled arrival to the United States and a new life. One of the most striking projects consisted in an inventive student engineering her own sound using a teakettle in order to recreate what she imagined as the sound inside a gas chamber in a concentration camp during World War II. As she explained during her presentation, the screeching teakettle captures for her both the sound of gas and the screaming of those persons trapped within a chamber. What an empathetic choice to make as a listening scholar: to imagine the voice of one in the midst of death.
Students worked on this assignment as part of their culminating assessment for the course. I assigned this work at the end of the course because it gave students an opportunity to delve into the work of a Sound Studies scholar: students drew on their skills as listeners developed over the term; returned to questions we asked regarding listening and interpretation of written and recorded texts; framed their own questions for inquiry; and used sound technologies such as Audacity and GarageBand to amplify their historical sound.
“Turn Up the Mix” by Flickr user Travis Hightower, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
LISTENING BACK
As I tune my ears excitedly towards another World Listening Day (this year on July 18, 2013), I find myself remembering my students’ portfolio reflections of their learning in this course. Students mentioned that their time in the course helped them pay more attention to sounds around them: “my ears have been retrofitted by my experience in this class.” Some students became more in tune with their own sound: “The world is too noisy. I need to focus in, to tune in to myself.” Yet others found themselves “slowly opening [them]selves up to others” and becoming “more engaged with others’ opinions even if they were different from” their own. Even though some students entered the class resistant to, uncertain about, or “unnerved” by the thought of a listening English course, they felt by the end that, in the words of one student, “Now I leave this class with a purpose and clearer understanding of the importance of listening to my own echo.” In short, the two groups of students who have taken this class grow more “in tune” to multiple frequencies of reading, writing, and learning.
“Verbose, sentimental foolery” by Flickr user Sarah Ross, CC BY-NC 2.0
Lastly, while I hoped students would grow as listeners, I did not anticipate that their perceptions of themselves as readers and writers would also shift. Students who previously described themselves as “just not an English student” or who began writing and reading assignments with self-defeating “I’m just not good at this” comments, delved more deeply into the writing process and produced strikingly confident, nuanced pieces by term end. They have grown in their sonic literacy. In this, my students remind me of the most essential of questions: How, to borrow Carol Dweck’s language, do we help students develop a growth, rather than a fixed, mindset where learning is concerned? In my view, listening—practiced as a dynamic, tinkering, beta-type approach to the study of literature and writing—provides interesting answers.
—
Featured image photo credit: “Listen, Understand, Act” by Flickr user Steven Shorrock, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0
—
Nicole Brittingham Furlonge earned her PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation, “On the Lower Frequencies: Listening and African American Expressive Culture,” marks the beginnings of her investment in sound studies as the field resonates with issues of race, class, gender and education. Her work has been published in the academic journals Callaloo and Interference, and in the publication St. Andrew’s Today. She also has published a cookbook for young children, Kitchen Passports: Trinidad and Tobago. She has taught in independent high schools and colleges for 16 years, including University of Michigan, UPenn, The Lawrenceville School, Holderness School and St. Andrew’s School in Delaware. She has extensive experience in the classroom and in administrative roles dealing with curriculum development, diversity issues, faculty development and issues regarding education, equity and access.Currently, Nicole chairs the English Department at the Princeton Day School in New Jersey and blogs at the Huffington Post. She lives in the green part of New Jersey with her spouse and their three young children.
—
REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
“The Sounds of Anti-Anti-Essentialism: Listening to Black Consciousness in the Classroom“–Carter Mathes
“Deejaying her Listening: Learning through Life Stories of Human Rights Violations“–Bronwen Low and Emmanuelle Sonntag
“Audio Culture Studies: Scaffolding a Sequence of Assignments“–-Jentery Sayers
—
Share this:
Sound at MLA 2011
MLA 2011 offers almost an embarrassment of riches for the sound studies scholar in the new year, testifying to the remarkable recent growth of the field. I have scoured PMLA in order to bring you everything and anything of interest for audio culture peeps, from panels that strike right at the center of the field (“Frost and Sound Studies” for example, or the panel that yours truly will be speaking on, “Literature and Sound,” organized by Amitava Kumar on Saturday from 5:15–6:30 p.m., Plaza III, J. W. Marriott ) to panels that provocatively push (and sometimes explode) the boundaries between sound studies and other fields such as literary studies, music, poetry, disability studies, history, music, urban studies, and trauma studies. This being a blog and all, I have also included relevant panels about digital humanities scholarship, a link to the field that has been strengthened not only by Sounding Out! but by HASTAC’s 2010 online forum, “Feel the Noise.”
Like my coverage of ASA this past November, I will be tweeting real-time sound-related thoughts and ideas inspired by the sound-related panels I attend at our twitterfeed:http://twitter.com/soundingoutblog; follow us (and the MLA 2011 backchannel) for the scoop!
If I somehow missed you or your panel, please let me know!: jsa@binghamton.edu
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Routes to Roots, Hollywood to Neighborhood
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Platinum Salon I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the American Folklore Society. Presiding: Camilla Henriette Mortensen, Univ. of Oregon
“Routes to Roots, Hollywood to Neighborhood: A Soundtrack for the Angels,” Nick Spitzer, Tulane Univ.
For abstracts and sound track, visit http://americanroutes.publicradio.org/archives/show/623/ los-angeles-soundtrack-for-the-angels after 31 Dec.
Silence and Signification in Medieval and Renaissance Literatures: Formal Challenges
1:45–3:00 p.m., Platinum Salon A, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Irit Ruth Kleiman, Boston Univ.
1. “Loving the Love of Silence: Material Silence in High Medieval Monastic Books,” Thomas
O’Donnell, Univ. of York
2. “Pilgrims in Jerusalem: Repetition of Silence,” Phillip Usher, Barnard Coll.
3. “‘Mescheance’ and Silence in French Romance,” Irit Ruth Kleiman
Theater and Performance in and of Los Angeles: Alternative Archives
1:45–3:00 p.m., Platinum Salon B, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Drama. Presiding: Ann Pellegrini, New York Univ.
1. “Acting like a Woman: Archival Engagement with the Women’s Building,” Lydia Brawner, New
York Univ.
2. “‘No, I’ve Not Forgotten’: Performance and Memory in Cambodian America,” Josh Takano
Chambers- Letson, Univ. of Cincinnati
3. “Records y Recuerdos: Music and Memory in Butchlalis de Panochtitlan’s The Barber of East L.A.,” Karen Tongson, Univ. of Southern California
Two- in- One: When the Same Individual Writes Both Words and Music
1:45–3:00 p.m., Platinum Salon I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relations. Presiding: Jeff Dailey, Five Towns Coll.
1. “Hildegard’s Own Singing: O Virga ac Diadema,” Janet Youngdahl, Univ. of Lethbridge
2. “Charles Dibdin: Troubled in Mind, like a Rolling Stone,” Betsy A. Bowden, Rutgers Univ., Camden
3. “Composers and Writers and Librettists in Musical Theater of Early- Twentieth- Century Spain: The Cases of Tomás Bretón and Pio Baroja,” Victoria Wolff, Univ. of Western Ontario
4. “Mathematical Music: Bob Dylan’s Extra- lyrical Appeal,” Justin Tremel, Univ. of Texas, Austin
For abstracts, write to cfanarts@aol.com.
Literary Research in/and Digital Humanities
3:30–4:45 p.m., Diamond Salon 1, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Libraries and Research in Languages and Literatures. Presiding: James Raymond Kelly, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst
Speakers: Heather Bowlby, Univ. of Virginia; Marija Dalbello, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick; Amy Earhart, Texas A&M Univ., College Station; Manuel M. Martin- Rodriguez, Univ. of California, Merced; Susanne Woods, Wheaton Coll., MA; Abby Yochelson, Library of Congress
Respondent: Robert H. Kieft, Occidental Coll.
This session is the inaugural meeting of a new interdisciplinary MLA discussion group formed by
librarians in the association for the discussion of matters of mutual interest with scholars. Panelists will present current work, and the group will discuss its future and how it can promote the creation and curation of scholarly collections and archives, publications, research data, and teaching and study tools through professional associations and on their own campuses.
For abstracts, visit http://guides.library.umass.edu/MLA2011
Wallace Stevens’s Voices
5:15–6:30 p.m., Diamond Salon 8, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Wallace Stevens Society.
Presiding: Elisabeth Oliver, McGill Univ.
1. “Less and Less Human: Stevens, Gibberish, and the Cry of the Animal,” Thomas Sowders, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge
2. “The War of ‘Of’ and Other Polyvocal Syntaxes in ‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,’” David Joseph Letzler, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York
3. “The Poet’s Voice in the Echo of Stevens,” Dean Rader, Univ. of San Francisco
Performances of Black Cultural Trauma and Memory
5:15–6:30 p.m., Atrium I, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Lisa Thompson, Univ. at Albany, State Univ. of New York
Speakers: Herman Beavers, Univ. of Pennsylvania; Diana Rebekkah Paulin, Trinity Coll., CT;
Sonnet Retman, Univ. of Washington, Seattle; Valerie Smith, Prince ton Univ.; Lisa Thompson;
Lisa Woolfork, Univ. of Virginia
This roundtable will examine various ways African American novelists, poets, filmmakers, play-
wrights, and other artists engage with and evoke black cultural trauma and memory in their work. The six participants on this roundtable will con- sider how representations of black pain, horror, terror, suffering, violence, and struggle are memorialized, performed, evoked, and fetishized.
Friday, January 7th, 2011
Narrating Illness and Disability: Risks and Rewards
8:30–9:45 a.m., Olympic II, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Ann Jurecic, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick
1. “Listening, Telling, Suffering, and Carrying On: Reflexive Practice or Health Imperialism?”
Rita Charon, Columbia Univ.
2. “Life Narratives in the Risk Society,” Ann Jurecic
3. “Narrating Disability inside and outside the Clinic,” G. Thomas Couser, Hofstra Univ.
Respondent: Priscilla B. Wald, Duke Univ.
Planet Wiki? Postcolonial Theory, Social Media, and Web 2.0
8:30–9:45 a.m., 406A, LA Convention Center
A special session. Presiding: Amit Ray, Rochester Inst. of Tech.
1. “Border Politics on YouTube: Heriberto Yépez’s ‘Voice Exchange Rates’ (or the Bodies That Anti- matter),” Tomás Urayoán Noel, Univ. at Albany, State Univ. of New York
2. “Truths of Times to Come: Deleuze, Media, India,” Amitabh Rai, Florida State Univ.
3. “Remapping the Space In- Between: Social Networks of Race, Class, and Digital Media in the Brazilian City,” Justin Andrew Read, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York
Respondent: Amit Ray
For abstracts and papers, visit https://honors.rit.edu/amitraywiki/index.php/Planet-Wiki
BBC Radio and British Writing
8:30–9:45 a.m., Diamond Salon 3, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Twentieth-Century English Literature.
Presiding: Allan Hepburn, McGill Univ.
1. “Cultural Tectonics; or, Why the BBC Became Afraid: Harold Nicolson and the New Spirit in Literature,” Todd Avery, Univ. of Massachusetts, Lowell
2. “The Listener as Interface,” Debra Rae Cohen, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia
3. “Only Connecting? E. M. Forster, Empire Broadcasting, and the Ethics of Distance,” Daniel
Morse, Temple Univ., Philadelphia
New (and Renewed) Work in Digital Literary Studies: An Electronic Roundtable
8:30–9:45 a.m., Plaza I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Association for Computers and the Humanities.
Presiding: Bethany Nowviskie, Univ. of Virginia
Speakers: Ernest Cole, Hope Coll.; Randall Cream, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia; Kathleen
Fitzpatrick, Pomona Coll.; Joseph Gilbert, Univ. of Virginia; Laura C. Mandell, Miami Univ., Oxford; William Albert Pannapacker, Hope Coll.; Douglas Reside, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Andrew M. Stauffer, Univ. of Virginia; John A. Walsh, Indiana Univ., Bloomington; Matthew
Wilkens, Rice Univ.
Projects, groups, and initiatives highlighted in this session build on the editorial and archival roots of humanities scholarship to offer new, explicitly methodological and interpretive contributions to the digital literary scene or to intervene in established patterns of scholarly communication and pedagogical practice. Brief introductions will be followed by simultaneous demonstrations of the presenters’ work at eight computer stations.
For project links and abstracts, visit http://ach.org/mla/mla11
Analog and Digital: Texts, Contexts, and Networks
10:15–11:30 a.m., Atrium I, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke Univ.
1. “Digital Networks and Horizontal Textuality,” David S. Roh, Old Dominion Univ.
2. “The Work of the Text in Haggard’s She: Full-Text Searching and Networks of Association,”
Robert Steele, George Washington Univ.
3. “Taken Possession Of: What Digital Archives Can Teach Us about Nathaniel Hawthorne, Religious Readers, and Antebellum Reprinting Culture,” Ryan C. Cordell, Univ. of Virginia
For abstracts, visit www.duke.edu/~ves4/mla2011
Polyglot Poetics
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 306B, LA Convention Center
A special session. Presiding: Martin McKinsey, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham
1. “Language Interference in Charles Bernstein’s Shadowtime,” Linda Reinfeld, Rochester Inst. of Tech.
2. “Bilingual Poetics and Representation in Robert Sullivan’s Star Waka,” Katherine Baxter,
Stanford Univ.
3. “Hsia Yü’s Posthumanist Polyglot Poetics,” Pao Chai Patricia Chiang, National Chung Cheng
Univ; James Rollins, National Chung Cheng Univ.
Film Simulations of Disability
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Atrium I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Disability Studies. Presiding: David Mitchell, Temple Univ.,
Philadelphia
1. “Disability Film Festivals and the Politics of Atypicality,” David Mitchell; Sharon Snyder, Brace Yourselves Productions
2. “Faking It: Canadian Identity and Disability Cinema,” Sally J. Chivers, Trent Univ.
3. “Deaf by Design,” Robert L. Johnson, Midwestern State Univ.
4. “Filming Illiteracy: The Pathology of Dyslexia iin Claude Chabrol’s La cérémonie,” Lynn Tarte
Ramey, Vanderbilt Univ.
Satire, Wit, and Humor in the Works of Langston Hughes
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Platinum Salon I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Langston Hughes Society. Presiding: Sharon Lynette Jones, Wright State Univ.
1. “‘Go Home and Write a Page Tonight’: Sub- versive Irony and Resistant Reading in ‘Theme for English B,’” Daniel Charles Morris, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette
2. “When Music Fails as a Universal Language: The Human Violin in Langston Hughes’s ‘Home,’” Koritha Mitchell, Ohio State Univ., Columbus
3. “A Global Perspective of Jesse B. Semple: Echoes of ‘Bop’ in Ankara, Turkey,” Donna Akiba
Sullivan Harper, Spelman Coll.
For abstracts, visit www.langstonhughessociety.org
Silent Night: The Archives of the Deaf and Blind
1:45–3:00 p.m., Atrium I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions. Presiding: Marta L. Werner,
D’Youville Coll.
1. “Entering the Light: Deaf Studies Digital Journal and the Archives of Sign Language Poetics,”
H- Dirksen Bauman, Gallaudet Univ.
2. “Blindness and Exile in the ‘Dark Blue World’ of Jaroslav Jezek,” Michael Beckerman, New York Univ.
3. “Accessioning Helen Keller: Disability, History, and the Politics of the Archive,” David Serlin,
Univ. of California, San Diego
The History and Future of the Digital Humanities
1:45–3:00 p.m., Plaza I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the MLA Program Committee. Presiding: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Pomona Coll.
Speakers: Brett Bobley, NEH; Katherine D. Harris, San José State Univ.; Alan Liu, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Tara McPherson, Univ. of Southern California; Bethany Nowviskie, Univ. of Virginia; Morgantown; Stephen J. Ramsay, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln; Susana Ruiz, Univ. of Southern California
This roundtable will bring together many different perspectives, from humanities computing to
digital media studies, including senior and junior scholars, research and teaching institutions, and faculty and staff members, so that we might explore the overlap, diffusion, and multiplicity of
views of the digital humanities that result.
Good Vibrations and Globalization: LA Pop and the Urban Crisis
3:30–4:45 p.m., Platinum Salon H, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Shaun Cullen, Univ. of Virginia
1. “Back Door Man: Jim Morrison between Watts and the Summer of Love,” Eric William Lott,
Univ. of Virginia
2. “‘What You See Is What You Get’?: Richard Pryor, Wattstax, and the Secret History of the Black Aesthetic,” Scott Saul, Univ. of California, Berkeley
3. “White Skin, Black Flag: SST Records and the Politics of White Ethnicity,” Shaun Cullen
Rethinking Style: Reinvigorating Writing Instruction with Rhetorical Stylistics
3:30–4:45 p.m., Platinum Salon B, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Rhetoric Society of America. Presiding: Jordynn M. Jack, Univ. of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill
1. “Rethinking Stylistic Pedagogy: Imitation, Sentence Combining, and Generative Rhetoric for
the Twenty- First Century,” Paul G. Butler, Univ. of Houston
2. “Speaking Figures: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Voiced Style,” Richard
Graff, Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities
3. “Teaching the Art of Amplifying,” Jeanne Fahnestock, Univ. of Maryland, College Pararrating Illness and Disability: Risks and Rewards, For abstracts, visit http://jordynnjack.com/rsa-at-mla/
Saturday, January 8th, 2011
Textual Scholarship and New Media
8:30–9:45 a.m., Diamond Salon 8, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions. Presiding: Michael Eberle-
Sinatra, Université de Montréal
1. “Comic Book Markup Language: An Introduc- tion and Rationale,” John A. Walsh, Indiana Univ., Bloomington
2. “Crowdspeak: Mobile Telephony and TXTual Practice,” Rita Raley, Univ. of California, Santa
Barbara
3. “Alternate Reality Games and Transmedia Textuality: Interpretive Play and the Immaterial Ar-
chive,” Zach Whalen, Univ. of Mary Washington
Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock: The Men Who Knew Too Much
8:30–9:45 a.m., Platinum Salon H, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Susan Mary Griffin, Univ. of Louisville; Alan Nadel, Univ. of Kentucky
1. “Awkward Ages: James and Hitchcock in Between,” Mark Goble, Univ. of California, Berkeley
2. “Sounds of Silence in The Wings of the Dove and Blackmail,” Donatella Izzo, Università di Napoli l’Orientale
3. “Hands, Objects, and Love in James and Hitchcock: Reading the Touch in The Golden Bowl
and Notorious,” Jonathan E. Freedman, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
The Institution(alization) of Digital Humanities
8:30–9:45 a.m., Atrium III, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Computer Studies in Language and Literature.
Presiding: David Lee Gants, Florida State Univ.
1. “A Media Ecological Approach to Digital Humanities; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love This Dynamic Field,” Kimberly Knight, Univ. of Texas, Dallas
2. “Power, Prestige, and Profession: Digital Humanities in the Age of Academic Anxiety,” Amy
Earhart, Texas A&M Univ., College Station
3. “Emerging Dialogue: Librarians and Digital Humanists,” Johanna Drucker, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Narrating the (After)Life of a City: Sighting, Sounding, and Moving in Detroit
10:15–11:30 a.m., Platinum Salon F, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Patricia Yaeger, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
1. “Detroit Still Lives: The False Movements of Spatial Stories in Ruins,” Renée Carine Hoogland, Wayne State Univ.
2. “Mean Martha Jean and the Queens of Soul,” Hortense Jeanette Spillers, Vanderbilt Univ.
3. “The Life of the Line: Finally Got the News All Cut Up,” Kathryne Victoria Lindberg,
Wayne State Univ.
Social Networking: Web 2.0 Applications for the Teaching of Languages and Literatures
10:15–11:30 a.m., Diamond Salon 2, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Information Technology. Presiding: Barbara Lafford, Arizona State Univ. West
1. “Writing for Nonprofits in Social- Media Environments,” Sean McCarthy, Univ. of Texas, Austin
2. “The Macaulay Eportfolio Collection: A Case Study in the Uses of Social Networking for Learning,” Lauren Klein, Graduate Center, City Univ. of
New York
3. “Social Media, Digital Vernaculars, and Language Education,” Steven Thorne, Portland State
Univ.
For abstracts, write to blafford@asu.edu
Other Sounds, Other Worlds: Literary Soundscapes in Asian and Transnational Contexts
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 304C, LA Convention Center
A special session. Presiding: Pieter Keulemans, Yale Univ.
1. “Sounding Spaces: The Role of Soundscapes in Amit Chaudhuri’s Novels Afternoon Raag and The Immortals,” Christin Hoene, Univ. of Edinburgh
2. “Auditors Abroad: Defamiliarized Listening in Japan and the West,” Kerim Yasar, Prince ton Univ.
3. “Selling the Soundscape of Beijing: Vendor Calls, Acoustic Attractions, and the Aesthetics of
the Literary Marketplace in Chinese Martial- Arts Fiction,” Pieter Keulemans
The Cold War in Africa
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 301B, LA Convention Center
A special session. Presiding: Gary Rees, Univ. of Houston
1. “South Atlantic Cold War Cartographies: Mapping State Terrorism in the Novels of Nadine
Gordimer and Mark Behr,” Kerry Bystrom, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
2. “Neoimperialism and the Body Politic: Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People,” Gary Rees
3. “The Cold War, Radio Diplomacy, and the Works of Naguib Mahfouz: Retelling the Narrative of Suez,” Douglas Eli Julien, Univ. of Minnesota, Morris
4. “Nonalignment and the Postcolony: India and Kenya in the Cold War,” James Daniel Elam,
Northwestern Univ.
Technology, Culture, and Authenticity, 1850–1910
5:15–6:30 p.m., Diamond Salon 2, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Douglas Mao, Johns Hopkins Univ., MD
1. “Feeling Real: Technology and the Sensations of Victorian War,” Rachel Teukolsky, Vanderbilt Univ.
2. “Authenticity in Utopia,” Douglas Mao
3. “Nature, Culture, and Technology: The Evolution of Subjectivities,” Regenia Gagnier, Univ. of
Exeter
Frost and Sound Studies
5:15–6:30 p.m., Diamond Salon 7, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Robert Frost Society.
Presiding: Robert Faggen, Claremont McKenna Coll.
1. “Robert Frost and the Spoken Word,” Tyler Brent Hoffman, Rutgers Univ., Camden
2. “Skillful Breaks: The Cultural Discourse of Frost’s Meter,” Michael L. Manson, American Univ.
3. “Breath Units: Projecting Verse from Robert Frost,” Natalie E. Gerber, State Univ. of New York, Fredonia
Respondent: Timothy Steele, California State Univ., Los Angeles
For abstracts, write to rfaggen@cmc.edu
“Giant Steps”: Jazz and Poetry
5:15–6:30 p.m., Plaza I, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Poetry.
Presiding: Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Penn State Univ., University Park
1. “‘How to Stay Alive’: John Taggart’s Sheets of Sound,” Patrick J. Pritchett, Harvard Univ.
2. “Sex, Gender, and the Jazz Body in Contemporary Poetry,” Meta DuEwa Jones, Univ. of Texas, Austin
3. “‘All Blues’: The Role of Genre in the Poetic Tradition of Vernacaular and Experimental Black
Music,” Michael New, Penn State Univ., University Park
Ha- Ha Hungary: Humor in Hungarian Film and Literature
5:15–6:30 p.m., 304C, LA Convention Center
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Hungarian Literature. Presiding: Gabriella Kec-
skes, Temple Univ., Philadelphia
1. “Why Laughter? Humor and Mockery in Petöfi and Mikszáth,” Enikö Molnár Basa, Library of
Congress
2. “‘Sirva vigad a magyar’: Melancholy Mirth and Witty Woe in Hungarian Literature,” Martha
Pereszlényi- Pinter, John Carroll Univ.
3. “Humor in Hungarian Folktales,” Katherine Mary Gatto, John Carroll Univ.
4. “Male Corpses, Female Voices: Images of European Gender Relations in György Pálfi’s Hukkle and Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver,” Gabriella Kecskes
For abstracts, write to gkecsk02@ temple .edu.
Literature and Sound
5:15–6:30 p.m., Plaza III, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Literature and Other Arts. Presiding: Amitava Kumar, Vassar Coll.
1. “The Vectorized Self: From Space to Sound in Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays,” J. D. Connor, Yale Univ.
2. “Echo and the Siren’s Song: Ann Petry’s ‘On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon,’” Jennifer Stoever- Ackerman, Binghamton Univ., State Univ. of New York
3. “Ecstatic Time: The Syncopated Form of Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance,” Matt Bell, Bridgewater State Coll.
4. “Records, Race, and Rape in Wright and Ellison,” Erich Nunn, Auburn Univ., Auburn
Sunday, January 9th, 2011
Writing the City
10:15–11:30 a.m., Atrium III, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Jeffrey Allen Steele, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
1. “The Urban (Un)Seen,” Kimberly DeFazio, Clarkson Univ.
2. “The Mediated City in Sousandrâde’s ‘Inferno de Wall Street,’” Jacob Wilkenfeld, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
3. “In the Heart of the City: Rewriting the Nineteenth- Century City through Adultery,” Vir-
ginia Piper, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
4. “Revisiting the Flaneur,” Dana Aron Brand, Hofstra Univ.
Parsing the Unspeakable
10:15–11:30 a.m., Diamond Salon 1, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Barry George Stampfl, San Diego State Univ.
1. “The Death of Trauma,” Michelle Balaev, Wake Forest Univ.
2. “Unspeakable Fidelities: Violence, Justice, and ‘Being True,’” Naomi Iliana Mandel, Univ. of
Rhode Island
3. “Unspeakability and the Rhetoric of Cruelty,” Michael F. Bernard- Donals, Univ. of Wisconsin,
Madison
From the New Song and Rock en Español to Spanish and Iberian Pop
10:15–11:30 a.m., Platinum Salon H, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the Division on Popular Culture. Presiding: Silvia Bermúdez, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
1. “Rock ’n’ Road Songs: Traveling New Routes in Spanish Rock Music,” Jorge P. Pérez, Univ. of Kansas
2. “Border Music in a Borderless World: Mapping the Sounds of NAFTA between Mexico and the United States,” William John Nichols, Georgia State Univ.
3. “Raperos, Boleros, and Salseros: Reconsidering the Authentic in Cuban Popular Music since
the Revolution,” Russell St Clair Cobb, Univ. of Alberta
Respondent: Frances R. Aparicio, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago
What the Digital Does to Reading
10:15–11:30 a.m., Diamond Salon 8, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Information Technology. Presiding: Laura C. Man-
dell, Miami Univ., Oxford
1. “What Would Jesus Google? Plural Reading in the Digital Archive,” Daniel Allen Shore, Grinnell Coll.
2. “Social Book Catalogs and Reading: Shifting Paradigms, Humanizing Databases,” Renee Hudson, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Kimberly Knight, Univ. of Texas, Dallas
3. “Illuminating Hidden Paths: Reading and Annotating Texts in Many Dimensions,” Julie
Meloni, Washington State Univ., Pullman
For abstracts, visit www.users.muohio.edu/mandellc/digRdg.html after 15 Nov.
Literature and/as New Media
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 309, LA Convention Center
Program arranged by the Division on Literature and Other Arts. Presiding: Jon McKenzie, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Speakers: Sarah Allison, Stanford Univ.; N. Katherine Hayles, Duke Univ.; Richard E. Miller, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick; Todd Samuel Presner, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Craig J. Saper, Univ. of Central Florida; Holly Willis, Univ. of Southern California; Michael L. Witmore, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
This session engages the nexus of literature and new media from several perspectives, ranging
from emerging forms of electronic literature to computer- enabled modes of literary analysis to
the broader implications of IT and new media for literary and cultural study. In an age of digital
poetry, graphic novels, and iPhone “appisodes,” how useful is the notion of distinct media? In what ways do quantitative methods of “distant reading” and “counting literature” extend traditional forms of analysis, and in what ways do they threaten or simply sidestep them? And what’s at stake in recent calls to critically mash up new media forms and processes in order to reboot the humanities as “new humanities,” “Big Humanities,” and “Humanities 2.0”?
Sound Reproduction and the Literary
1:45–3:00 p.m., Diamond Salon 6, J. W. Marriott
A special session. Presiding: Jentery Sayers, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
1. “Sound as Sensory Modality in Electronic Literature,” Dene M. Grigar, Washington State Univ., Vancouver
2. “‘Cause That’s the Way the World Turns’: John Edgar Wideman’s Sent for You Yesterday and the Mnemonic Jukebox,” Jürgen E. Grandt, Gainesville State Coll., GA
3. “Analog History: Kevin Young’s To Repel Ghosts and the Textuality of the Turntable,” Paul
Benzon, Temple Univ., Philadelphia
Respondent: Jentery Sayers
For abstracts, examples, and biographies, visit www.hastac.org/ after 1 Dec.
Literature and Opera
1:45–3:00 p.m., 304A, LA Convention Center
Program arranged by the Division on Nineteenth-Century French Literature. Presiding: Elisabeth
Akhimoff Ladenson, Columbia Univ.
1. “Otello’s French Connection,” William Germano, Cooper Union
2. “Stendhal’s Ear,” Nicholas Dames, Columbia Univ.
3. “ Saint- Saëns’s Samson,” Kevin Richard Kopelson, Univ. of Iowa
Share this:
Current Top Posts
April 2021
January 2020
November 2019
October 2019
August 2019
April 2014
November 2017
March 2015
December 2017
October 2015
Sounding Out! 
Recent Comments