The Sense of Listening: Music, Noise, an

This course examines the notion of listening as a problem of cultural theory, history, and anthropology in a range of frameworks: from its peculiar position in the history of the human senses as alternative to hearing; to the philosophical tradition of acoustics and acousmatics (from Pythagoras to Pierre Schaeffer); to the development of music appreciation and cultivation of listening practices and tastes in modernity; to its relative dependency on technologies of sound; and finally to its significance as a metaphor for the worldly encounter and democratic politics.