CFP: “Sound Modernity: Architecture, Technology, and Media”, SAH 15, Chicago, April 15-19, 2015

Dear Colleagues,

please find attached the Call for Papers for our session “Sound Modernity: Architecture, Technology, and Media” at the 68th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians in Chicago, April 15-19, 2015.

The deadline for online submissions is June 6th, 2014. Please note that SAH provides an automated system and we won’t be able to receive any proposals directly, nor grant extensions. At the following link, you will find the list of all sessions as well as the submission instructions and the abstracts submission portal: sah.org/conferences-and-programs/2015-conference-chicago. We are looking forward to a resonating, pulsating and thrilling session in 2015!

Please forward to any interested parties.

regards,
Sabine von Fischer, Olga Touloumi

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SOUND MODERNITY: ARCHITECTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND MEDIA

The last decade has seen a growing interest in studies of sound and acoustics. Beginning with Emily Thompson’s 2002 Soundscape of Modernity, scholars and historians have argued that histories of sound technology and architectural acoustics can equip us with powerful tools to examine the operations and processes of modernization. By investigating the practices and discourses of architects, engineers, acousticians, and composers, these scholars demonstrate that the “acoustic,” deeply entrenched in the making-of-modern, invites an unprecedented dialogue among cultural studies, institutional histories, and socio-technical histories of sound.

We invite papers that consider and situate sound modernities within the framework of architectural practices and discourses. What kind of sound practices have architects incorporated within their projects and what kind of disciplinary stakes did these practices pose to architecture? What has been the impact of changing aural cultures on design practices and pedagogies? Which aural futures did architects envision in their projects and which pasts did they recall?

We are interested in contributions that examine sound modernities in architecture, interrogating the spaces that articulated them, the technologies that formed them, and the media that transmitted them. Presentations should engage with the full spectrum of architectural practice, examining projects for assembly halls, learning environments, urban housing, laboratories etc. The panel also aspires to explore the discursive articulation of sound modernities in theory and history, and how architects engaged with established and emerging sound media to communicate modern ideas about architecture. The goal is to bring forth the acoustic aspect and to launch a critical discussion on the aural history of space and the spatial history of aurality.

Session chairs: Olga Touloumi, Harvard University and Sabine von Fischer, ETH Zürich