Advertise on podcast: New Books in Sound Studies

In an era dominated by visual information, what can the sounds of a pandemic reveal about crisis and care? How might attuning to sonic atmospheres uncover new dimensions to states of emergency and their implications for collective life? In Sonic Socialism: Crisis and Care in Pandemic Hanoi (U California Press, 2025), Christina Schwenkel examines the use of sound in COVID-19 response efforts in urban Vietnam. Based on “soundwork” conducted in Hanoi in 2020 during the pandemic’s first year, she shows how acoustic technologies played a pivotal yet overlooked role in state efforts to achieve record-low infection rates worldwide. Across lived experiences of quarantine, lockdown, and spatial distancing, Schwenkel explores sound-based interventions to curb virus transmission, and the public’s response to these auditory measures. From instant messaging alerts to public health videos and neighborhood loudspeakers, sonic governance sought to transform urban sounds and listening practices to mobilize action, drawing people into networks of care and control. As anthropology stands at a crossroads, Sonic Socialism makes the compelling case for the value of sensory autoethnography in reimagining a more careful and caring ethnographic practice in a post-pandemic world. Christina Schwenkel is Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She currently serves on the Editorial Committee of University of California Press and is Vice Chair of the AAS Publications Editorial Board. Her research examines the material legacies of infrastructural warfare in urban Vietnam and the Cold War circulations of people, objects, design technologies, and architectural practices among socialist-allied countries in its wake. She is the author of The American War in Contemporary Vietnam: Transnational Remembrance and Representation (Indiana UP, 2009) and the award-winning Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam (Duke UP, 2020), which together explore the material practices through which people remember and rebuild in the aftermath of empire. Her most recent book, a sensory autoethnography entitled Sonic Socialism: Crisis and Care in Pandemic Hanoi (UC Press, 2025), extends her work on urban disaster and decay to encompass media infrastructures and the anthropology of sound. Sonic Socialism is available in open-access format via Luminos. She can be reached via her personal website: https://christinaschwenkel.com. Camellia (Linh) Pham is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Her research focuses on modern Vietnamese literature, socialist realism, and literary translation across French, Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. She can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

Studies of forms of media have focused on either political or cultural histories of media. Political histories study media growth and literacy, and the emergence of liberal democratic institutions in Western and postcolonial societies. Cultural histories study the multiple origins of media technologies, seek lost or marginalised cultural objects, and examine how artefacts are connected to earlier modes of production and consumption. What is lost in both is the idea that media and technologies have an independent existence, with their own lives, histories, and afterlives. Inhabiting Technologies/Modernities: Media and Cultural Practices in South Asia (Orient BlackSwan, 2025) fills this gap, showing how media and technologies create the human condition even as they are created by it. The authors highlight this through everyday artefacts like the book, newspaper, radio, photograph, film, television and activism on digital media. P. Thirumal is Professor of Communication Studies at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. Carmel Christy K. J. is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University and is affiliated with the South Asian Studies program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In this third, and final, panel, Robert Boynton moderates a conversation which asks, “Can podcasts save the university?” In it, Joy Connolly, Barry Lam, and Dr. Aurora Hutchinson discuss what role podcasts might play in the university’s system of hiring, promotion and tenure.  Robert S. Boynton is the director of the Literary Reportage program, and associate director of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He is author of The Invitation Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea’ s Abduction Project, and The New New Journalism. Joy Connolly is president of the American Council of Learned Societies and a scholar of ancient Roman political thought and literature. At ACLS, she has led initiatives such as Doctoral Futures to broaden the scope and reach of humanistic inquiry. She is the author of The State of Speech and The Life of Roman Republicanism, and is completing a new book called All the World’ s Pasts. Professor Barry Lam earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton, taught at Vassar, and recently moved to UC Riverside. He is the host and executive producer of Hi-Phi Nation, a story-driven podcast about philosophy, at Slate magazine. He is also an Associate Director of the Marc Sanders Foundation, which promotes excellence in philosophy and public philosophy. Dr Lauren Arora Hutchinson, previously a BBC journalist, is an award-winning audio storyteller, an academic, and the inaugural director of the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab, a studio and incubator for world class stories at the intersection of science, ethics, medicine and public health, at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Lauren’s immersive audio work has premiered at IDFA and the Venice Film Festival. She has a PhD in History of Science with a focus on Oral History, and was a Wellcome Trust Imperial Media Fellow. She is the host of the signal award winning podcast playing god? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In this second panel of the day, Ellen Horne moderates a conversation with Chenjerai Kumanyika, Barry Lam, and Julia Barton, three veterans who have made a specialty of working on creative, idea-informed series. Professor Ellen Horne directs the Podcasting and Audio Reportage concentration at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She was the executive producer and editor of Admissible: Shreds of Evidence, and was host, reporter, and producer for Luminary’s Lies We Tell. Horne was the executive producer of WNYC’s Radiolab, where she won George Foster Peabody Awards, Third Coast Awards, and the Kavli Science Journalism Award. Her new documentary, Age of Audio, tells the story of the podcast from birth to boom to today. NYU Professor Chenjerai Kumanyika specializes in using narrative non-fiction audio journalism to critique the ideology of American historical myths about issues such as race, the Civil War, and policing. His podcast Empire City was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best podcasts of 2024. He was the co-creator, co-executive producer and co-host of Uncivil, a podcast on the Civil War, and he is the collaborator for Scene on Radio’s Season 2 “Seeing White,” and Season 4 on the history of American democracy. Professor Barry Lam earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton, taught at Vassar, and recently moved to UC Riverside. He is the host and executive producer of Hi-Phi Nation, a story-driven podcast about philosophy, at Slate magazine. He is also an Associate Director of the Marc Sanders Foundation, which promotes excellence in philosophy and public philosophy. Julia Barton is an award-winning podcast, audiobook, and radio editor. She was the executive editor of Pushkin Industries, where she helped develop Revisionist History and Against the Rules. She’s the editor of Malcolm Gladwell’s audiobook The Bomber Mafia, Michael Specter’s Fauci, and Michael Lewis’s unabridged Liar’s Poker and companion podcast. Her 2019 series, Spacebridge, was called “dazzling” by The New Yorker. She is the author of the audio history newsletter, Continuous Wave. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In the first panel, podcaster Benjamen Walker discusses his work with NYU media studies professor Mara Mills as they produce Tuning Time, a podcast about the politics of time stretching technology. Professor Mills is an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of disability studies, Science and Technology Studies, and sound studies. She teaches in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and is Director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Her work on “disability and media” spans disability arts and technoscience, with a focus on the history, politics, and cultures of electronics and digital media. Benjamen Walker is a radio writer and producer. He is one of the co-founders of the podcast network Radiotopia from PRX, and for a decade hosted and produced his award winning program Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything. The first panel concluded with a presentation by NYU musicologist Fanny Gribenski in which she discusses her current project, The Elephant in the Piano: Music, Ecology, Empire. The book, and podcast, is an investigation of the 19th century piano through a material history of its primary components: ivory, wood, felt, and metal. Professor Gribenski is a historical musicologist who specializes in the history of musical and sonic practices. Her first book, L'Église comme lieu de concert. Pratiques musicales et usages de l'espace (Paris, 1830–1905) analyzes the role of music in the production of sacred spaces. Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859-1955 (University of Chicago, 2023) traces the rocky path towards international pitch standardization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

At the center of 1970s New York's most iconic clubs—from the celebrity-studded Studio 54 to the premiere lesbian discotheque Sahara—stood a queer Black woman on the turntables: Sharon White. With a sound she describes as "edgy, deep, aggressive, tech, synthy, percussive and lush," White became the first woman resident DJ at the Saint and the only woman to ever play Paradise Garage, breaking barriers in spaces where women were told they didn't belong. Her five-decade career didn't just challenge disco's male-dominated DJ culture; it redefined it, paving the way for future generations of women behind the decks. In this season finale, we explore how one visionary artist carved out space in disco's inner sanctum and what her trailblazing journey reveals about women—especially queer Black women—who shaped the sound and culture of an era from behind the booth. In the Season 2 Finale, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares talk with legendary DJ Sharon White. Born in West Babylon, New York, White studied music at the New York School of Music before becoming a radio disc jockey. In 1975, she transitioned to club DJing, finding near-instant success at legendary venues including Studio 54, the Saint, Paradise Garage, Sahara, Limelight, and the Warehouse. She has been credited by several other women DJs, including Lizzz Krizer and Wendy Hunt, for helping them break onto the scene. White is still DJing today, and you can find her mixes on SoundCloud and Mixcloud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

In the penultimate episode of season 2 of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with acclaimed historian Alice Echols, author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. Echols—who holds the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California—unpacks how disco not only mirrored but actively shaped the social, racial, and sexual revolutions of 1970s New York City. Echols is the author of several books that have framed the way we understand the history of the 1960s and 1970s, and particularly the way music has shaped society at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race. The conversation begins with Echols’ newest research, drawn from her forthcoming book Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic, which reexamines interracial activism and allyship during the Black Freedom Movement. From the Angela Davis trial to the alliances formed within SNCC and the Black Panther Party, Echols traces how solidarity both flourished and fractured across the era. Turning to disco, she considers disco’s uneasy place in Black and queer cultural history. She notes how disco was created by and for Black audiences, while also being rejected by many in the Black music industry, like James Brown, for being “politically empty.” Through figures like Nile Rodgers, Grace Jones, and Sylvester, Echols argues that disco’s lush orchestration and sensual performances reflected radical redefinitions of gender, sexuality, and Black masculinity. With musical excerpts woven throughout, Purcell and Soares guide listeners through the sonic textures of disco—its roots in funk and soul, its resistance to genre boundaries, and its capacity to move bodies and politics alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

With breathtaking complexity and haunting beauty, the songs of whales have long fascinated scientists. Whales are the only mammals that can sing continuously for ten hours or more, changing the unique songs they sing every year. In Why Whales Sing (JHU Press, 2025), bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges decades of established science. Fifty years of field research have led most scientists to conclude that humpback whales sing for the same reason that birds do: to advertise their sexual fitness. But if whale songs are nothing more than tools of attraction, why do whales sing even when they're alone and there are no listeners nearby? In light of modern advances in neuroscience and ocean acoustics, Mercado reaches the surprising conclusion that whales may not actually be "singing," but rather engaging in an activity more commonly associated with dolphins and bats--echolocating--which enables them to see their world with sound. By incessantly streaming sounds while listening closely to the returning echoes, whales may be actively tuning their brains in ways that allow them to monitor the movements of silent whales located miles away. Sophisticated, long-range sonar can enable whales to perceive their vast underwater worlds in unimaginable ways. From the military origins of whale song recordings to the persistent mysteries of cetacean communication, this book displays the wonder of whales and reshapes how we view their intelligence, behavior, and acoustic mastery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cognitively by the language we use, and neurologically by sub-personal mechanisms, as revealed by scientific and philosophical analyses. Under contemporary capitalism, as the gap between this self-image and reality becomes an ever greater source of social and mental distress, these theoretical insights are potential dynamite. Shifting his explorations from the sonic to the social, amplifying alienation and playing with psychic noise, artist and performer Mattin finally lights the fuse. The noise is here to stay. Alienation is a constitutive part of subjectivity and an enabling condition for exploring social dissonance—the territory upon which we already find ourselves, the condition we inhabit today. Mattin speaks (and sings) to Pierre d’Alancaisez about his performance score Social Dissonance, in which the audience is the instrument and the legacy of the Marxist theory of alienation. Mattin is an artist, musician and theorist working conceptually with noise and improvisation. Through his practice and writing, he explores performative forms of estrangement as a way to deal with structural alienation. Mattin has exhibited and toured worldwide. He has performed in festivals such as Performa and Club Transmediale and lectured in institutions such as Dutch Art Institute, Cal Arts, Bard, and Goldsmiths. Mattin is part of the bands Billy Bao and Regler and has over 100 releases on different labels worldwide. He co-hosts the podcast Social Discipline. Mattin took part in 2017 in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel. Information on the Social Dissonance concert at Documenta 14 A video recording of one of the performances Social Discipline podcast Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play in how we belong to places? Atmospheric Knowledge takes up these questions through detailed analyses of practices that generate atmospheres and in which knowledge emerges through visceral intermingling with atmospheres. From combined musicological and anthropological perspectives, Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr investigate atmospheres as a compelling alternative to better-known analytics of affect by way of performative and sonic practices across a range of ethnographic settings. With particular focus on oceanic relations and sonic affectedness, Atmospheric Knowledge centers the rich affordances of sonic connections for knowing our environments. A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

Kabir is the most alive of all dead poets. He is a fabric without stitches. No centres, no edges. Anand threads his way in. Over the years, as a publisher and editor, Anand immerses himself in the works of Babasaheb Ambedkar and other anticaste thinkers. He gives up his practice of music and poetry, blaming his disenchantment on caste. One day in Delhi, Anand starts looking for Kabir. He finds him here, there, everywhere. He begins to pay attention to the many ways in which Kabir’s words are sung, and translates them. Soon, Kabir starts looking out for Anand. The songs of Kabir sung by a range of singers—Prahlad Tipaniya, Fariduddin Ayaz, Mukhtiyar Ali, Kumar Gandharva, Kaluram Bamaniya, Mahesha Ram and other wayfarers—make Anand return to music and poetry. Anand translates songs seldom found in books. Along the way, he witnesses Kabir drawing on the Buddha, often restating ancient suttas in joyous ways. The Notbook of Kabir is the result of this pursuit with no end in sight. This is the story of how Anand loses himself trying to find Kabir. You can check out the YouTube list of relevant Kabir's songs curated by S. Anand here. For readers interested in the paradoxical, downside-up language in Kabiri and its resonances with Daoist language (e.g. this translation of Daodejing), especially the mysthical atheist aspects, check out appendix B to this book by Brook Ziporyn. Feel free to check out Anand's Navayana Publishing, and his insightful blog posts here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

In the wake of Disco Demolition Night in 1979—a cultural bonfire that seemed to signal the end of disco—something unexpected began to rise from Chicago’s underground. This episode traces the story of Frankie Knuckles, the Bronx-born DJ who became known as the “Godfather of House.” After the backlash against disco pushed the genre out of the mainstream, Knuckles found refuge in Chicago’s Black, Latinx, and queer nightlife scenes, most famously at a club called the Warehouse. There, he pioneered a new sound: blending disco’s heartbeat with gospel, soul, electronic drum machines, and experimental edits. What emerged was “house music,” named after the Warehouse itself, a genre that spoke directly to marginalized communities while later exploding into a global phenomenon. We’ll explore how Knuckles’s artistry and innovation not only kept dance floors alive after disco’s so-called death but also transformed music history. By tracing the arc from the ruins of Disco Demolition to the rise of house, this episode reveals how moments of cultural rejection can spark radical creativity. Frankie Knuckles didn’t just keep the party going—he built a new world of sound that would change the way the world dances. In this eighth episode of season two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares discuss the life and work of Frankie Knuckles with Micah Salkind, author of Do You Remember House?: Chicago’s Queer of Color Undergrounds (Oxford University Press, 2018). Micah Salkind is the Director of Civic and Cultural Life at the Rhode Island Foundation. Prior, in his roles as Deputy Director and Special Projects Manager at the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism, he managed large grants and strategic artist initiatives for the City, collaborating with non-profit cultural institutions as well as its emerging artists, designers, and creative entrepreneurs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

On July 12, 1979, Chicago’s Comiskey Park erupted into chaos during what was supposed to be a quirky baseball promotion. Shock radio jock Steve Dahl’s “Disco Demolition Night” incentivized listeners to bring disco records to a White Socks doubleheader, where, between games Dahl promised to blow them up in center field. Instead, the event descended into a riot, forcing the team to forfeit. On the surface, the incendiary event looked like a wild publicity stunt gone wrong — but in hindsight, it was tantamount to a book burning. In retrospect, the destruction of thousands of disco records was a symbolic rejection of the social meanings the sounds held, particularly for queer communities of color. The night marked not just the literal destruction of vinyl but a cultural turning point when disco’s dazzling reign collapsed under backlash. Or did it? In this episode, we explore how a stadium stunt revealed the deeper racial, sexual, and generational tensions shaping American music at the dawn of the 1980s. In episode seven, host Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares talk with Gillian Frank is a historian of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics in the twentieth-century United States at Trinity College, Dublin. He is a managing editor of NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality and co-host of the podcast Sexing History, which explores how the past shapes contemporary debates about sex. Frank’s scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals and edited volumes, and he has held research fellowships at Princeton and other institutions. His current book project examines the history of child adoption and foster care in the U.S., tracing how religion, race, and politics shaped family formation in modern America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

In the fifth episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with the legendary DJ Nicky Siano. The history of dance music in 1970s New York is synonymous with the life and work of Siano. He was among the early attendees of David Mancuso’s Loft dances, where he learned to organize parties and DJ for an audience. Siano transposed Mancuso’s informal gatherings to a proper discotheque called The Gallery (1972-1977,) which he co-owned and DJed. At The Gallery, Siano pioneered techniques such as beatmatching, EQing, and using three turntables to fashion a proto-disco sound through his preferred selection of funky soul and R&B records, inspiring a host of celebrated figures like Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles. The Gallery was a seminal 1970s nightclub that laid a blueprint for iconic New York clubs like the Paradise Garage and Studio 54. Siano is perhaps most well-known for DJing and being fired from Studio 54 for his unconventional methods. For Siano, music was more than pleasure. It was a source of empowerment, a refuge, and spiritual salve that has enabled him to persevere and thrive as a DJ in New York during the Seventies and beyond. In this conversation, Siano illustrates the power of music that animated his involvement as an activist in the Stonewall riots. As a DJ, Siano has maintained his belief in the capacity of music to bring people together, despite social differences, and as a healing force during the AIDs era. In this conversation, Siano traces his evolving romance with music, echoing his enduring salvo: Love is the Message. The title of this episode draws from a memoir that Nicky Siano is currently authoring, I, DJ: Stonewall to Studio 54. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

In The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination (Reaktion, 2025), nature writers Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen set out in search of sounds beautiful and loathsome, melodious and disturbing, healing, strange and intimate. The phenomena of sound may be fleeting and evanescent, but the memory of it can open a window into the soul, deepening our connections with time, the environment and each other. From the edge of the solar system to the crackle of arctic sea ice, from the ancient oracle site of Dodona to the singing pillars of Hampi, each of these 36 essays explores stories of sound through the lens of history, science and culture, stylishly blending fantastical facts and unique anecdotes to create a compelling narrative. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies