William Paulson believes that as contemporary science extends its influence over areas of thought that have long been the province of the humanities, scholars in literary disciplines may suffer for their lack of contact with work in the sciences of mind and information. In The Noise of Culture, he speculates on the role of literature in the post-literary culture of the information age and proposes a vital reorientation of the study of literature, both affirming its specificity and exploring its developing relationship with modem science. Paulson discusses literature in the context of information theory, particularly the theory of self-organizing and autonomous systems. Reviewing and building upon the work of such thinkers as Michel Serres, Henri Atlan, Francisco Varela, and Judith Schlanger, Paulson offers a new kind of conceptual vocabulary for literary theory. He concludes that literature functions as the noise of culture, a source of variety in the circulation and production of ideas and a rich and indeterminate margin through which messages are sent and transformed.

DIVExamines the role of media technologies in shaping urban Africa through an ethnographic study of popular culture in northern Nigeria./div

Scholars consider sound and its concepts, taking as their premise the idea that popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way through sound. The wide-ranging texts in this book take as their premise the idea that sound is a subject through which popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way. From an infant's gurgles over a baby monitor to the roar of the crowd in a stadium to the sub-bass frequencies produced by sound systems in the disco era, sound—not necessarily aestheticized as music—is inextricably part of the many domains of popular culture. Expanding the view taken by many scholars of cultural studies, the contributors consider cultural practices concerning sound not merely as semiotic or signifying processes but as material, physical, perceptual, and sensory processes that integrate a multitude of cultural traditions and forms of knowledge. The chapters discuss conceptual issues as well as terminologies and research methods; analyze historical and contemporary case studies of listening in various sound cultures; and consider the ways contemporary practices of sound generation are applied in the diverse fields in which sounds are produced, mastered, distorted, processed, or enhanced. The chapters are not only about sound; they offer a study through sound—echoes from the past, resonances of the present, and the contradictions and discontinuities that suggest the future. Contributors Karin Bijsterveld, Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer, Carolyn Birdsall, Jochen Bonz, Michael Bull, Thomas Burkhalter, Mark J. Butler, Diedrich Diederichsen, Veit Erlmann, Franco Fabbri, Golo Föllmer, Marta García Quiñones, Mark Grimshaw, Rolf Großmann, Maria Hanáček, Thomas Hecken, Anahid Kassabian, Carla J. Maier, Andrea Mihm, Bodo Mrozek, Carlo Nardi, Jens Gerrit Papenburg, Thomas Schopp, Holger Schulze, Toby Seay, Jacob Smith, Paul Théberge, Peter Wicke, Simon Zagorski-Thomas

Tracing efforts to control unwanted sound--the noise of industry, city traffic, gramophones and radios, and aircraft--from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century.

"From the time of the great Greek philosophers, the good, true, and beautiful were seen as inseparable. Beauty is always good and true. It can be the still, small voice crying in the wilderness, calling us to higher things. Jimmy Mitchell communicates this with an eloquence and elegance which is itself a thing of beauty." — Joseph Pearce, Biographer of Shakespeare, Solzhenitsyn, Tolkien, and Chesterton In an era marked by rampant secularism and endless noise, the ten principles of Let Beauty Speak empower Christians to evangelize the world by bringing beauty to the forefront of their lives and reminding the world what it means to be human. This book is particularly timely given the social unrest, political upheaval, and cultural strife of our times. The world's problems cannot be solved by worldly solutions. Politics, medicine, technology, and other secular fields have their place in society, but the deepest existential questions of the human heart can only be answered by the beauty of holiness found in the lives of the saints. From cave diving in Austria to summer camps in New Zealand, Let Beauty Speak is full of personal stories and rich theology that will inspire you to become a great saint as you apply the book's principles to your own life. Each chapter is organized into beautiful, bite-size sections that make it easy for non-academics to enjoy. Each chapter also concludes with practical tips and recommendations that give you an opportunity to further personalize the principles and transform your day-to-day life. From embracing childlike wonder to integrating prayer, work, and leisure into your everyday life, this is your how-to guide for evangelizing others by first living your humanity well. If not you, then who? If not now, then when? Turn these principles into a way of life, and you'll join the long line of saints whose holiness was the remedy for the isolation, confusion, and meaninglessness of their times.

From its beginnings in hip hop culture, the dense rhythms and aggressive lyrics of rap music have made it a provocative fixture on the American cultural landscape. In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Tricia Rose, described by the New York Times as a "hip hop theorist," takes a comprehensive look at the lyrics, music, cultures, themes, and styles of this highly rhythmic, rhymed storytelling and grapples with the most salient issues and debates that surround it. Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and History at New York University, Tricia Rose sorts through rap's multiple voices by exploring its underlying urban cultural politics, particularly the influential New York City rap scene, and discusses rap as a unique musical form in which traditional African-based oral traditions fuse with cutting-edge music technologies. Next she takes up rap's racial politics, its sharp criticisms of the police and the government, and the responses of those institutions. Finally, she explores the complex sexual politics of rap, including questions of misogyny, sexual domination, and female rappers' critiques of men. But these debates do not overshadow rappers' own words and thoughts. Rose also closely examines the lyrics and videos for songs by artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One, Salt N' Pepa, MC Lyte, and L. L. Cool J. and draws on candid interviews with Queen Latifah, music producer Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, dancer Crazy Legs, and others to paint the full range of rap's political and aesthetic spectrum. In the end, Rose observes, rap music remains a vibrant force with its own aesthetic, "a noisy and powerful element of contemporary American popular culture which continues to draw a great deal of attention to itself."

Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918 presents a range of historical case studies on the sounding worlds of the European past. The chapters in this volume explore ways of thinking about sound historically, and seek to understand how people have understood and negotiated their relationships with the sounding world in Europe from the Middle Ages through to the early twentieth century. They consider, in particular: sound and music in the later Middle Ages; the politics of sound in the early modern period; the history of the body and perception during the Ancien Régime; and the sounds of the city in the nineteenth century and sound and colonial rule at the fin de siècle. The case studies also range in geographical orientation to include considerations not only of Britain and France, the countries most considered in European historical sound studies in English-language scholarship to date, but also Bosnia-Herzegovina, British Colonial India, Germany, Italy and Portugal. Out of this diverse group of case studies emerge significant themes that recur time and again, varying according to time and place: sound, power and identity; sound as a marker of power or violence; and sound, physiology and sensory perception and technologies of sound, consumption and meaning.