COLT 70.09 Approaching Sounds through Literature

A literary text is not a silent medium: it animates sounds, voices, and noises, and it does so in a different way from any electronic sound recording technology. This class introduces a variety of approaches to analyzing sounds represented in literature and how they enrich our understanding of listening, music, silence, resonance, language, and communication. We will read key theoretical texts in the interdisciplinary field of sound studies and put them into conversation with a selection of literary texts (such as short stories, poems, and essays) from a wide range of historical and cultural contexts that pay special attention to sounds. The questions we will explore include: How do nonlinguistic sounds, silence, noise, and nonsense convey things that cannot be expressed in language? What do literary sounds tell us about race, citizenship, and power dynamics that may otherwise remain obscure?

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Comparative Literature