Comparative Literature Program

A literary text is not a silent medium: it animates sounds, voices, and noises, and it does so in
a different way from any electronic sound recording technology. This class introduces a
variety ofapproaches to analyzing sounds represented in literature and how they enrich our
understanding of listening, music, silence, resonance, language, and communication.We will
read key theoretical texts in the interdisciplinary field of sound studies and put them into
conversation with a selection of literary texts (such as short stories, poems, and essays) from
a wide range of historical and cultural contexts that pay special attention to sounds. The
questions we will explore include: How do nonlinguistic sounds, silence, noise, and nonsense
convey things that cannot be expressed in language?What do literary sounds tell us about
race, citizenship, and power dynamics that may otherwise remain obscure?