Ca Foscari, University of Venice, Italy
15-17th May 2025
Deadline: 1st Nov 2024
Over the past decade, sonic approaches to East Asia have attracted scholars from across fields of history, literature, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, and environmental humanities. This sonic turn, drawing on the ecumenical canon of Sound Studies, has added voice, tone, timbre, and even silence to existing narratives and frameworks of nation, empire, society, technology, revolution, race, and gender. At its best, work has gone further to not only foreground sound and hearing as a key aspect of experience and history, but to challenge or refine existing understandings, frameworks, and narratives. Importantly, this turn has also provided a set of shared topics and terms by which scholars of different regions and periods can meet, share work, and explore common themes.
It is in this spirit that a two-day workshop will be held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, from May 15-17, 2025. The workshop will focus on two potential directions for the field: First, on the possibility for sonic approaches to contribute to or challenge existing paradigms, temporalities, or national boundaries of East Asian history. Second, we are particularly interested in work that explores and deploys endogenous understandings and language to engage with the sonic world and that can contribute to a field of Sound Studies that remains dominated by theories drawn from Western experience.
We invite scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum to submit paper proposals that engage with the sonic and touch on any of the following themes:
- Subjectivity and agency
- Social movements
- Practices and phenomenology of listening
- Gender
- Class and race
- Communication, Media, Sonic Infrastructure
- Technology
- Propaganda
- Popular culture
- Literature
- Language
- Historiography, theory, and sound
Funding provided by the European Commission through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions will provide accommodation for three nights in Venice. Additional funding will be made available on a competitive basis for up to two PhD or Postdoctoral researchers for travel to and from Venice.
Submission Guidelines
Those interested in participating should send an abstract of up to 300 words to the organizers, Dayton Lekner and Laura De Giorgi, to eastasiansound@gmail.com by November 1, 2024.
Contact Information
Dayton Lekner and Laura De Giorgi
Contact Email
eastasiansound@gmail.com