This two-day symposium will forge new lines of inquiry and dialogue in the study of sound and society under state socialism. Scholars from history, music, literature, film, and media studies will share recent work on regions of the globe from the Caribbean to East Asia where the revolutionary reshaping of political and social relations has had far-reaching effects on the way people hear the world around them. In the course of the conference, we will ask: how are political ideologies made audible? What are the material conditions, media networks, and sensory attunements that underpin state control of the means of sound production? And what might a “socialist sound studies” look or sound like? 

Recent decades have witnessed a “sonic turn” across the humanities and social sciences, as sound is increasingly recognized as a generative resource for historical, aesthetic, and ethnographic research. In keeping with sound’s unruly capacity for bleeding through walls and bridging distances between people and places, this gathering will encourage conversations across regional and disciplinary boundaries. While the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China continue to play outsize roles in our understanding of state-socialist political formations, there is much to be heard in the transnational, peripheral, and intermedial spaces in which socialist ideas have flourished. 

The symposium will include panels featuring eight invited speakers, commentary from University of Pittsburgh faculty, and a keynote address by Andrea Bohlman, Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Co-sponsored by:

Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences | University Center for International Studies | Asian Studies Center | Center for African Studies | European Studies Center | Department of English | Department of History | Department of History of Art & Architecture | Department of Music | Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures | Global Studies Center | World History Center

Schedule:

Friday, February 6

3:30pm -> Opening remarks 

• Nancy Condee, Director of REEES
• Brian Fairley, REEES Postdoctoral Fellow

4:00pm -> Session 1

• Matthew Kendall (University of Illinois, Chicago), “Revolutions per Minute: Sound Recording and the Soviet Creative Imagination”
• Tsitsi Ella Jaji (Duke University), “Listening for the Voices of African Revolution: On the Risks and Rewards of Song in Guinea, South Africa, and Zimbabwe”

Adriana Helbig (University of Pittsburgh), Discussant

Saturday, February 7

9:00am -> Session 2

• Paulina Hartono (University of Texas at Arlington), “On Both Sides: Radio's Sonic Culture in Taiwan and Mainland China During the Cold War”
• Mejgan Massoumi (Carnegie Mellon University), “Echoes Across the Border: Radio, Refuge, and the Cold War Soundscape in the Afghan-Soviet Borderlands”

Peng Hai (University of Pittsburgh), Discussant

11:00am -> Session 3

• Tom McEnaney (University of California, Berkeley), “Sonic Frontiers: Locating Revolutionary Sound in Cuban Cinema”
• Sven Spieker (University of California, Santa Barbara), “Acousmatic Poetics of the Avantgarde: Malevich and Beyond”

Anna Kovalova (University of Pittsburgh), Discussant

2:00pm -> Session 4

• Alejandra Bronfman (University of Albany), “Socialist Echosystems: the Politics of Recording in the Cold War Caribbean”
• Gabrielle Cornish (University of Wisconsin–Madison), “Atomic Listening: Echoes from Big to Small”

Shannon Garland (University of Pittsburgh), Discussant

4:00pm -> Keynote Address

• Andrea Bohlman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Socialisms’ Audible Glitches: Worlding Broken Records, Erased Tapes, and Archival Quiet”