From Nov. 5-8, 2015 the annual Film & History conference will be held at The Madison Concourse Hotel. Since 2000, the conference has grown into an international event for scholars working in a wide range of disciplines. This year’s theme is Journeys, Detours, Breakdowns, and there is an area of the conference devoted to sound (with close to 10 sound-related panels). They are listed below, or you can see the full program here:

Thursday, November 5th

9:45 – 11:15 Old Technologies, New Histories (Sound Decisions I)

Paul Moody, Brunel University London – The City of Sound: Alan Blumlein and the Development of Stereo Sound on Film

Katherine Quanz, Wilfrid Laurier University – Lonely Boy(s) on Location: Portable Recording at the NFB

Tim Anderson, Old Dominion University – Second Person Sound: Music Minus One Plus Instructed Subjects

3:00 – 4:30 Voices and Effects (Sound Decisions II)

Casey Long, University of Wisconsin-Madison – Moving Mouths: The Development of Lip Synch Techniques in Hollywood Animation

Vanessa Theme Ament, Ball State University – Alien Sound: Surprising Sources for Sound Design for James Cameron’s Aliens

Rebecca Weeks, University of Auckland – Listening to History: HBO’s Band of Brothers

 

Friday, November 6

8:00 – 9:30 From Innovation to Practice (Sound Decisions III)

Ivy Roberts, Virginia Commonwealth University – Image-Sounds and Sound-Pictures: Innovation and Standardization in Late 1920s Films and Television

Matthew Perkins, University of California-Los Angeles – Converging Sounds: Inter-Media Labor During the Transition to Talking Films

Jeff Smith, University of Wisconsin-Madison – Scoring the Stuff That Dreams are Made of: Music in Three Versions of The Maltese Falcon

12:45 – 2:45 Musical Design (Sound Decisions IV)

Katherine Spring, Wilfrid Laurier University – Synths Tron: The False Promise of the Integrated Soundtrack

Ariane Lebot, New York University – Authoring the Soundtrack: Shared Responsibilities and Professional Identities in Martin Scorsese’s New York Films

Matt St. John, University of Wisconsin-Madison – Homegrown Spectacle: The Broken Blossoms Score in Small American Cities

Neil Verma, Northwestern University – A Juggler on the Moon

3:00 – 4:30 The International Adoption of Sound (Sound Decisions V)

Lea Jacobs, University of Wisconsin-Madison – Rethinking the Sync: Adorno, Eisler, and Eisenstein

Jeffrey Bullins, State University of New York-Plattsburgh – Musical Breakdown: Realism in the Soundtracks of the 1930s

Charles O’Brien, Carleton University, Canada – The Road to Monte Carlo: Between Hollywood and Berlin

 

Saturday, November 7

8:00 – 9:30 Game On (Sound Decisions VI)

Alex Kupfer, New York University – Radio’s Grand Stand: Early Broadcasting, Electroacoustic Technology, and Baseball

William Knoblauch, Finlandia University – SIMON: The World’s Most Famous Music Memory Game

Neil Lerner, Davidson College – Hearing Death in Video Game Music’s Silent Era

12:45 – 1:45 Special Session: The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research

3:00 – 4:30 Formats and “Formats” (Sound Decisions VII)

Jeremy Morris, University of Wisconsin-Madison – Music Re-Tuned: Streaming, Sound Apps, and Music’s “New Formats”

J. J. Bersch, University of Wisconsin-Madison – Let’s Start Making Sense: On Small-Scale Indexing and Phenomenology of the Concert Documentary

Mark Kerins, Southern Methodist University – Home Theater Sound Technology, Culture, and Style

 

Sunday, November 8
8:00 – 9:30 Case Studies in the International Reception of Road to Life, the First Soviet Feature-Length Sound Film (Sound Decisions VIII)

Vincent Bohlinger, Rhode Island College – “Thoroughly Russian”: Road to Life in the United States

Ling Zhang, University of Chicago – A Lamb Astray: Road to Life and Its Cultural Afterlife in China

Anastasia Fedorova, Hokkaido University, Japan – “Our Only Guide to Sound Cinema:” Nikolai Ekk’s Road to Life and Its Reception in Japan

9:45 – 11:15 Horror and Suspense (Sound Decisions IX)

Jacob Smith, Northwestern University – The Birds: Listening to Radio’s Sonic Multitude

Eric Dienstfrey, University of Wisconsin-Madison – House of Tracks: Surround Sound in 1950s Horror