Class Cultural Studies

This course investigates the theoretical identification of concepts related to a theory of culture and cultural formations; the identification of operational paradigms in the contemporary debate around Cultural Studies and Sound Studies; the acquisition of critical and analytical skills in addressing the cultural economy of sound; the conceptual recognition of aural techniques and devices as cultural encoders; the identification and systematic contextualization of aural ecologies active in contemporary culture.

1. Problematization of the concept of culture

1.1 cultural studies and sound studies

1.2 scientific perspectives on sound. Science and perception

1.3 technique, institution and symbolic production

1.4 culture as a political economy of perception: the case of hearing

1.5 aural landscapes, community and power.

2. From sound to symbol. From symbol to sound

2.1. musical notation and the introduction of electricity.

2.2 the origins of music and musical informatics

3. Sound Aesthetics

3.1 Rock and Drugs

3.2 Jazz: racism and revolution

3.3 planetary songs: ethnocentrism and eurocentrism

3.4 John Cage

3.5 from Varèse to Electronic Music

4. Formation tensions of Western aural culture: synoptic view

4.1 Harmony / noise 

4.2 voice / logos

5. "Redemption of the ear" and postmodern aural ethnography: multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, globalization.

Theoretical presentation and class discussion. Examples and practical exercises. All points in the program involve textual or sound instances that will allow the points to be developed to be analytically or illustratively rooted.

Adorno, T., The Culture Industry, Londres, 1991 

Attali, J., Bruits. Essai sur l'économie politique de la musique, Paris, 2001

Bennett, A., Cultures of Popular Music, Maidenhead, 2005

Bijsterveld, K., Dijck, J., Sound Souvenirs, Amsterdam, 2009

Cage, J. Silence. Lectures and Writings, Hannover, 1963 

During, S., Cultural Studies: A critical introduction, Londres, 2005

Erlmann, V. (ed.), Hearing Cultures. Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity, Oxford, 2004

Johnson, J., Listening in Paris. A Cultural Story, Berkeley, 1995

Kahn, D., Noise, Water, Meat, Cambridge (Mass), 1999

LaBelle, B., Acoustic Territories. Sound Culture and Everyday Life, New York, 2010

Miranda, J.A.B., Teoria da Cultura, Edições Séc. XXI, 2002

Russolo, L., "El Arte de los Ruídos", in Sín Título, nº 3, 1996

Sterne, J. The Audible Past. Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, Durham, 2003