HMVA0431AU MA-seminar: Anthropology of Sound

Volume 2014/2015
Education
Musicology
Content

How do human beings experience their likewise environment in a specific moment? How do they perceive themselves as listening and sounding creatures under the historically and daily changing conditions of bodies, technologies as well as cultural or historical dispositives?

This seminar focuses on one specific research field in the broader area of sound studies: This field refers to a broader and more recent tradition of an anthropology which tries to leave the essentialist, and euro-, andro- and logocentric approaches to the “condition humaine”, the human condition behind. They ask: What is a human being, after all the transformations, after all the disruptions, after even an assumed end of traditional concepts of what a human being should or could be?

Drawing from contemporary studies on performativity, on media, but also on science history, the history of spirituality and beliefs, the history of the senses and the history of artistic and design practices this anthropology of sound makes an effort to sketch the life of humanoids on earth under various and often disturbing, often joyful conditions. How do they articulate these experiences? How can we do research on ever transforming ›hearing perspectives‹ (Auinger/Odland)?

Wulf, Christoph, 2012, Anthropology: A Continental Perspective, Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Serres, Michel. 1985. Les Cinq Sens. Paris: Grasset.

Auinger, S. and Odland, B., 1998, Hearing Perspective (Think with your Ears). Online www.o-a.info/​background/​hearperspec.htm

Schulze, Holger, 2012, Situation und Klang. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

Schulze, Holger, and Christoph Wulf, 2007, Klanganthropologie. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag

  • Category
  • Hours
  • Course Preparation
  • 311
  • Exam Preparation
  • 84
  • Guidance
  • 1
  • Lectures
  • 24
  • Total
  • 420
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Check own curriculum. ECTS point can vary.
Censorship form
No external censorship
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Censorship form
External censorship