Media and Communication Studies 10th Anniversary Talk

Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Associate Professor of English, Binghamton University – State University of New York,

We talk too often about race and racism as if they are solely visual concepts. Jennifer Stoever’s lecture unsettles the assumed relationship between race and looking by introducing the concept of the “sonic color line,” the often undetected ways that sound and listening have functioned to produce and enforce racial hierarchies throughout U.S. history and in our present moment. Stoever argues that sound matters in our everyday lives and that we can work to shift our historically and culturally conditioned listening practices toward a more equitable world.