Iberian Sound Cultures

Recent years have seen a growing interest in ‘sound studies’, a field of study that addresses the role of the auditory in culture and society. This one-day symposium seeks to establish a dialogue between sound studies and Iberian cultural studies. It intends to examine the place of sound both across a range of Iberian contexts (architecture, geography, acoustic environments) and media (sound technologies and sound art, music and film, for instance).

Using the auditory as a critical starting point, the workshop seeks to address the following questions: How does sound inform our understanding of Spanish and Portuguese history — and in particular, their long and fraught road towards modernization? How might the categories of noise and silence, for instance, enable us to illuminate more fully historical junctures of crisis and contradiction within the Iberian peninsula? How might attendant changes in technology and culture be understood, or indeed rethought, through sound?

This symposium invites scholars working across a diverse range of disciplines and media to rethink the place of sound in Iberian cultures.

Confirmed speakers: Keynote: Kathleen M Vernon, (Stony Brook University)
Ian Biddle (Newcastle), Richard Elliott (Newcastle), Sally Faulkner (Exeter), Samuel Llano (Manchester), Eva Moreda (Glasgow), Sarah Wright (RHUL), João Silva (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Tom Whittaker (Warwick)

Event organisers: Tom Whittaker (Warwick) and Samuel Llano (Manchester)

Free event: all welcome. Please register in advance HERE.