Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

by Suisman, David; Strasser, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780812241990
• ISBN10: 0812241991
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-03
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

During the twentieth century sound underwent a dramatic transformation as new technologies and social practices challenged conventional aural experience. As a result, sound functioned as a means to exert social, cultural, and political power in unprecedented and unexpected ways. The fleeting nature of sound has long made it a difficult topic for historical study, but innovative scholars have recently begun to analyze the sonic traces of the past using innovative approaches.Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproductioninvestigates sound as part of the social construction of historical experience and as an element of the sensory relationship people have to the world, showing how hearing and listening can inform people's feelings, ideas, decisions, and actions. The essays inSound in the Age of Mechanical Reproductionuncover the varying dimensions of sound in twentieth-century history. Together they connect a host of disparate concerns, ranging from issues of gender and technology to contests over intellectual property and government regulation. Topics covered range from debates over listening practices and good citizenship in the 1930s, to Tokyo Rose and Axis radio propaganda during World War II, to CB-radio culture on the freeways of Los Angeles in the 1970s. These and other studies reveal the contingent nature of aural experience and demonstrate how a better grasp of the culture of sound can enhance our understanding of the past.

Author Biography

David Suisman teaches history at the University of Delaware and is author of Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music. Susan Strasser is Professor of History at the University of Delaware and the author of Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Thinking Historically About Sound and Sense	p. 1
Affect and the Politics of Listening
Distracted Listening: On Not Making Sound Choices in the 1930s	p. 15
"Her Voice a Bullet": Imaginary Propaganda and the Legendary Broadcasters of World War II	p. 47
"Savage Dissonance": Gender, Voice, and Women's Radio Speech in Argentina, 1930-1945	p. 69
Sonic Objects
Collectors, Bootleggers, and the Value of Jazz, 1930-1952	p. 95
High-Fidelity Sound as Spectacle and Sublime, 1950-1961	p. 115
Hearing Order
Occupied Listeners: The Legacies of Interwar Radio for France During World War II	p. 141
An Audible Sense of Order: Race, Fear, and CB Radio on Los Angeles Freeways in the 1970s	p. 159
Sound Commerce
"The People's Orchestra": Jukeboxes as the Measure of Popular Musical Taste in the 1930s and 1940s	p. 181
Sounds Local: The Competition for Space and Place in Early U.S. Radio	p. 199
The Sound of Print: Newspapers and the Public Promotion of Early Radio Braodcasting in the United States	p. 221
Notes	p. 243
List of Contributors	p. 299
Index	p. 301
Acknowledgments	p. 311
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