Sound, Race, and Resistance

In this course, we will examine how works from across Latin America address intersections of listening and race. Exploring where sound serves as a site of racialization as well as how the ear can construct and contest difference, we will place films, literary texts, a tape documentary, and even a radio play into conversation with readings from the interdisciplinary field of sound studies. Doing so will allow us to consider how we might counter essentialist notions of sound as we critique misguided understandings of necessary connections between voice and race, to name one key concern. In addition to contemplating these ways that our ears have been tuned or trained, we will also study works that demand we listen differently.