Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies
Amount Awarded: $2,971.46
Awarded for 2016-17
Title: Sound Studies and Rhetoric Initiative
The Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies will begin offering two courses that explore the relationships between sound studies and rhetoric: “Music as Rhetoric” (undergraduate) and “Sonic Rhetorics” (adv. undergraduate/graduate). The intent of this application is to provide a base of technological support for the course’s curricula and continuity by funding recording equipment for student use and also to bring award-winning author, musician, and folklorist Stephen Wade to campus for a public performance/guest lecture.
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The Dee Grant funds were spent on sound recording equipment: eight portable audio recorders, two complete micro audio studios, complete with microphones, stands, and USB recording interfaces, and a pair of portable studio monitors (speakers). This equipment has already been implemented in the first iteration of the “Sonic Rhetorics” course and will continue to support the Fall 2017 course titled “Music and Rhetoric.” As I mentioned in my proposal, scholars in sound studies consider “what sound does in the human world, and what humans do in the sonic world” (Sterne, The Sound Studies Reader, 2012, p. 2). The two courses listed above bring a rhetorical perspective to this human/sound/world trichotomy at two successive levels. In “Music as Rhetoric,” undergraduate students consider the function, influence, and impact of music across its cultural, political, and commercial environments. In the course, the rhetorics of genre, style, medium, recording and (especially) listening are addressed in activities ranging from the rhetorical analyses of pop songs and jazz records to discussions about composed architectural sound spaces like the La Scala opera house in Italy and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. In the more advanced course, “Sonic Rhetorics,” advanced undergraduates study prominent and emerging critical theories about sound. With efforts to understand the critical history of sounds studies more generally, students study foundational sound theories, and then work to become familiar with sound as it is taken up in scholarship within rhetorical and composition studies. In courses that study the relationship between sound and rhetoric, writing should be central. These courses expand on a more narrow understanding of writing and encouraged “writing with sound” using sound recording and production as the discursive medium (instead of the traditional alphabetic text). “Sonic Rhetorics,” then, was designed to encourage students to learn to listen with more precision and care, to be able to navigate and draw on sonic archives, and then—most importantly—be able to produce recordings at a quality that reflected these new skills. The centerpiece of the course was half-semester long podcast project. Students used recording equipment acquired with the Dee Grant funds to make a three-episode podcast series. The handheld devices allowed students to move off campus and into more diverse environments where high-quality field recordings, oral histories, personal musical performances, and more abstract soundscape and ambient sound samples could bee collected and produced. I was so pleased with the results of these student projects. We had work that captured the sonic landscapes of the outdoor recreation community in Utah, interviews with Salt Lake City workers at the downtown library, the U, and an incredible interview with a SLC resident currently experiencing homelessness. I plan on preparing one or more of these recordings for presentation at next year’s Dee Grant reception—and perhaps as a link that can be listened to on the Dee Grant Website. The upcoming Fall 2017 course (“Music and Rhetoric”) is intended as a prequel for “Sonic Rhetorics”—in subsequent years it will be taught first in the sequence. It will have a slightly different emphasis, but the equipment will continue to be used to enhance and expand on what is typically possible in a writing classroom. Podcasting will still be an important part of the class, but the focus will shift to writing, speaking, and thinking about the persuasive effects of music. I can’t wait to teach it! Also as mentioned in the initial proposal, this new sonic initiative in both classes will have a lasting beneficial impact both within the department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies and across the College of Humanities. The work my students accomplished also fulfills the primary aims of the Dee Grant Program. The grant allowed me to dramatically increase my teaching effectiveness: students didn’t just write about sound, they used sound to write! Dee Grant funds helped to create a unique pedagogical environment in the classroom which in turn allowed me to support and challenge students with new subject areas and educational tools. It also permitted me to encourage and promote educational experiences and projects that reached beyond the walls of the classroom and into the community.