Marina Peterson

“Sensing: Elemental media as an anthropology for change” will use the cities of Austin and Manchester as sites for sensory ethnographic investigations of urban ecology. The course is organized around air, water, earth, and fire as themes for engaging with the city through media and the senses. These elemental themes will also be addressed in terms of how various forms of media provide means of moving through and sensing the city. In this way, the course foregrounds an ecological, ethical approach that both acts on the city and reflects on its tools and methods of engagement. Students will learn methods of field recording, sound walking, sound mapping, documentary photography, photo-elicitation, interviews, and acoustic archaeology. As a Global Virtual Exchange course, students in Austin and Manchester will exchange material and collaborate on a project, thus gaining knowledge and understanding of global urban processes and ecological concerns. 

This course introduces doctoral students to major texts in sociocultural theory that have been central to the development of the discipline of anthropology from its colonial roots in North America and Western Europe to the contemporary period. While not a comprehensive history of anthropological theory, this course provides a chronological and contextualized perspective as it explores and interprets the relationships between varying and, at times, competing theoretical, epistemological, and ethical claims on anthropology and related disciplines. Based on classical scholarship by some of the “founding fathers” of modern social science, this course traces parts of the genealogical trajectories taken by the anthropological study of culture and society. Following that intellectual legacy, this course asks a central question: How can we make sense of sociocultural anthropology as an academic discipline today? Problematizing the role the concept of “culture” has played in shaping the idea of the “field,” we will look at “location” as a principal site of epistemological limitation and possibility for anthropological research.

Sonic ethnography starts with listening, and listening to how people listen. Listening is a practice that people

do as a way of being in and knowing the world – it is something in which we are all expert, even if not always

acknowledged. Thus sonic ethnography investigates ways in which people orient themselves via the aural,

how expertise is enacted through listening, and how sociabilities emerge around attunement to sound. At the

same time, sound it is neither separable from other senses nor an object in and of itself. Instead, sound is, as

anthropologist Steven Feld suggests, a way of being in and knowing the world.

Themes of listening, silence, noise, sound worlds, and technology will organize discussion of topics that

include the history of recorded sound in anthropology, acoustics and environmental sound, the global

circulation of media, and the politics of song. Class meetings will be spent on discussion of readings, listening,

fieldtrips, guest lectures, audio workshops, and writing. The course pays particular attention to concerns of

writing sound, writing with sound, and writing about sound. Writing sound is approached as a practice, with

modes of inscription that might include writing or audio recording. With an emphasis on developing ways of

using written language to address sound as an ethnographic concern, we will also attend to the breadth of the

meaning of “phonography” by listening to ethnographic recordings and creating short audio pieces at the end

of the semester.

Sensory ethnography encompasses ethnographic research with an emphasis on the senses to media

made with an attention to the haptic. In this class we take a broad approach to sensory ethnography,

drawing out ways of doing, thinking, and making. Hence we will read, go on ethnographic outings, write,

and create. Emphasis is on sensing as a way of engaging the world and one another, on the immanence

of sensation, on the ephemeral and atmospheric, and on a more than human sensorium – all concerns

that carry an ethical charge in the current climate.

Infrastructure enables movement, whether of water or people; it distributes electricity and goods; and it affords connectivity between people over time and space. As such, infrastructure creates relationships between resources, energy, built form, information, and people. Often unnoticed until it breaks down, infrastructure provides the underpinning for much of life as we know it. This course will address what infrastructure is and what it does. Topics will include: what happens when infrastructure fails, how infrastructure supports or challenges social inequalities, the work required for the creation and maintenance of infrastructure, and the relationship between senses, emotion, and infrastructure. Finally, it asks: what is the promise of infrastructure, and can new forms of infrastructure can be imagined? The class is organized around infrastructural forms, drawing on texts that introduce key conceptual concerns in the anthropology of infrastructure. Using Austin as a site for investigation, we will take field trips to infrastructure sites as a class. Students will learn ethnographic research methods and develop a research project over the course of the semester.

This course introduces doctoral students to major texts in sociocultural theory that have been central to the development of the discipline of anthropology from its colonial roots in North America and Western Europe to the contemporary period. While not a comprehensive history of anthropological theory, this course provides a chronological and contextualized perspective as it explores and interprets the relationships between varying and, at times, competing theoretical, epistemological, and ethical claims on anthropology and related disciplines. Based on classical scholarship by some of the “founding fathers” of modern social science, this course traces parts of the genealogical trajectories taken by the anthropological study of culture and society. Following that intellectual legacy, this course asks a central question: How can we make sense of sociocultural anthropology as an academic discipline today? Problematizing the role the concept of “culture” has played in shaping the idea of the “field,” we will look at “location” as a principal site of epistemological limitation and possibility for anthropological research.

Sonic ethnography starts with listening, and listening to how people listen. Listening is a practice that people do already as a way of knowing about things; it is something in which we are all expert, but not often acknowledged. Thus sonic ethnography addresses ways in which people orient themselves via the aural, how expertise is enacted through listening, and how attachments of kinship and friendship cohere around an attunement to sounds. Emphasizing an anthropological approach to sound, the course engages themes of listening, noise, silence, audio technology, vibration, and voice through readings, class fieldtrips, guest lectures, and research. Students will learn research methods in sonic ethnography, create field recordings, and explore diverse ways of writing sound. 

The city resounds with traffic and laughter, birds and airplanes, the nightclub and its revelers, the stillness of wind rustling leaves. In this course we will listen to the city through sensory investigations that attend to the physicality of perception and sound – to that which is audible and beyond. Austin will serve as our site of sonic investigation for an urban “acoustemology” (Feld) that explores the significance of sound for urban social life. Topics to be addressed include musical cultures, protest sound, noise ordinances and gentrification, architectural acoustics, and energy, environment and infrastructure. Sonic methodologies will focus on ethnographic approaches to sound and listening, soundwalks, basic field recording techniques, and the study of sonic archives. Along with class listening fieldtrips, students will conduct their own sonic ethnographies throughout the course of the semester.

The city resounds with traffic and laughter, birds and airplanes, the nightclub and its revelers, the stillness of wind rustling leaves. In this course we will listen to the city through sensory investigations that attend to the physicality of perception and sound – to that which is audible and beyond. Austin will serve as our site of sonic investigation for an urban “acoustemology” (Feld) that explores the significance of sound for urban social life. Topics to be addressed include musical cultures, protest sound, noise ordinances and gentrification, architectural acoustics, and energy, environment and infrastructure. Sonic methodologies will focus on ethnographic approaches to sound and listening, soundwalks, basic field recording techniques, and the study of sonic archives. Along with class listening fieldtrips, students will conduct their own sonic ethnographies throughout the course of the semester.