What is meant when we say someone or something “sounds American”? Can a person sound like a certain gender, social class, sexuality, or race? How would we possibly define that sound? What role does disability play in these sonic identities and sonic technologies? And what might it mean to think of a culture through the ways it sounds and listens, instead of how it looks or sees? This course will explore these questions and others by studying novels, songs, podcasts, poems, and the changing forms of sonic technologies like microphones, radios, mp3s, turntables, and more.

To say that ‘to love is to live’ is nothing less than to affirm the proximity between these two actions, where, if nothing else, only a meager vowel separates the two. Love attests to a paradoxical type of freedom: we must be free to love; yet, when we are in love, we are unable to freely choose who or what it is that we love. Once ensnared in its warm embrace, love encircles us like a python, squeezing gently (sometimes not) until it completely surrounds us. But love can swallow and transform our world as quickly as it departs from it, leaving us only with malady.

The Statue of Liberty with welcome torch always raised. The Hollywood sign against golden California hills. Subways and freeways running like arteries above and below ground, offering to transport us around and across the city. Many iconic images of New York City and Los Angeles construct U.S. urban centers as a space of endless movement and possibility. Physically, New York and Los Angeles spread across the map and encompass multiple neighborhoods and communities, seemingly facilitating our ability to access, explore, and find new connections.