“The Strange Case of Missile Mail: A Drone Archaeology” On June 8, 1959, the U.S. Post Office collaborated with the U.S. Navy on an experimental mail missile launch from a submarine off the coast of Florida. Missile mail represented an extension of the Post Office’s long-term strategy of adopting new transportation technologies for the movement of mail and an orchestrated attempt to domesticate missiles and encourage U.S. citizens to understand technologies of warfare in other terms, as normal parts of commerce and everyday life. In…

“Sound Pedagogy: A Seminar for Sound Teaching” While sound has long been central to various academic disciplines, audio brings its own distinct challenges and opportunities as a tool to teach with and through. The recent emergence of Sound Studies as an interdisciplinary field of study, however, has spurred increased attention toward sound as a tool for teaching and engaging with new generations of students. In this collaborative workshop hosted by the Borghesi-Mellon Workshop on Sound Studies, Jonathan Sterne will lead participants in a discussion about…

Public Lecture with the Center for Visual Culture entitled "Sounds from Dangerous Places: Sonic Journalism". In this keynote lecture, Peter Cusack asks “what can we learn from dangerous places by listening to their sounds? The talk will include recordings and photographs from Chernobyl, the Caspian Oil fields, and the Aral Sea, Kazakhstan and will forcus on how “dangerous places” (military zones, polluted areas, etc.) can be both sonically and visually compelling, even beautiful and atmospheric.

A workshop around the work of Peter Cusack, with Gregg Mitman, Craig Eley, Frederic Neyrat, and Andrew Salyer. We will discuss Cusack’s works and several art clips (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer, etc)

Come join the Borghesi-Mellon Sound Studies Group at Helen C. White Media Studios for our kick off planning meeting.

Featuring Craig Eley (ACLS Fellow) and Steve Paulson (Executive Producer) of the To the Best of Our Knowledge. In this seminar, Steve Paulson and Craig Eley will discuss the tension between scholarly knowledge and public audiences, the power of radio as a platform, and provide some practical tips for scholars at any stage of their career interested in amplifying their own voices to broader publics.

From Nov. 5-8, 2015 the annual Film & History conference will be held at The Madison Concourse Hotel. The conference has a number of exciting panels devoted to the theme of sound.