9th Blankensee Colloquium - Hearing Modern History
17 - 19 June 2010, Berlin
Sponsored by the Kooperationsfonds at the Wissenschaftskolleg,
Institute for Advanced Study Berlin
Organized by Dr. Daniel Morat, Free University Berlin
Information on Funding of the Blankensee Colloquia through Cooperative Funds
Visual history has experienced a remarkable boom in the field of cultural and historical studies over the past few years. Even though the question of how visual productions and practices change is not limited to a given period, it often goes along with the thesis of a hegemony of vision in the modern age. But this emphasis on the “scopic regimes of modernity” (Martin Jay) obscures the fact that since the mid 19th century the very conditions and habits of hearing and listening have also been subject to fundamental change occasioned by modern phenomena such as urbanization, industrialization, mechanization, and the emergence of sound recording media. Accordingly, it appears appropriate for historians of modernity to deal not only with visual history but also with the cultural meaning of hearing and listening and the historical changes they have undergone. The 9. Blankensee Colloquium on “Hearing Modern History. Auditory cultures in the 19. and 20. Century” will do so by investigating sound in such diverse fields as urban history, the history of science, the history of objects, and the history of modern subjectivity.
Thursday, June 17 Museum for Communication, Leipziger Straße 16, Tagungsraum
15:00 Arrival and Greetings
15:30 Introduction: Daniel Morat (Freie Universität Berlin)
16:00 Panel I: Theoretical Approaches
Chair: Doris Kolesch (Freie Universität Berlin)
Wolfgang Ernst (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Towards a Media-Archaeology of Sonic Articulation
Holger Schulze (Universität der Künste Berlin)
The Sound and the Senses. Historical Anthropology of Sound
17:30 Coffee Break
18:00 Public Keynote Lecture
Mark M. Smith (University of South Carolina)
Friday, June 18 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, Jägerstraße 22-23, Einsteinsaal
9:30 Panel II: Sounds of Urban Pasts
Chair: Paul Nolte (Freie Universität Berlin)
Karin Bijsterveld (Maastricht University)
Auditory Topoi in the Representation of Urban Soundscapes
Annelies Jacobs (Maastricht University)
Analyzing the Dramatization of Sound in the Urban Past
11:00 Coffee Break
11:30 Panel III: Music Listening in the City
Chair: Hansjakob Ziemer (Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin)
Sven Oliver Müller (Universität Bielefeld / European University Institute Florence)
Suspense, Ennui, and the Invention of Silence. Berlin, London, Paris, and Vienna 1850-1900
Philip V. Bohlman (University of Chicago) / Lars-Christian Koch (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) / Sebastian Klotz (Universität Leipzig)
Berlin, Chicago, Kolkata. Urban Auditory Cultures in Historical and Comparative Perspective
13:00 Lunch Break
14:30 Panel IV: Sounds of Science
Chair: Julia Kursell (Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin)
Anthony Enns (Dalhousie University)
The Human Telephone. Physiology, Neurology, and Sound Technologies
Alexandra Hui (Mississippi State University)
16:00 Coffee Break
16:30 Panel V: Objects of Sound
Chair: Rebecca Wolf (Freie Universität Berlin)
Stefan Gauß (Universität der Künste Berlin)
Listening to the Horn. On the Cultural History of Phonograph and Gramophone
Christine Ehardt (Universität Wien)
Phones, Horns, and Audio-Caps Listening in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Saturday, June 19 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, Jägerstraße 22-23, Einsteinsaal
9:30 Panel VI: Auditory Cultures in Interwar Germany
Chair: Yaron Jean (Universität Leipzig)
Axel Volmar (Universität Siegen)
In Storms of Steel. Staging the Soundscape of World War I in the Weimar Republic
Carolyn Birdsdall (University of Amsterdam)
The Documentary Ear? Sound Aesthetics and the Auditory Imagination in Interwar Germany
11:00 Coffee Break
11:30 Panel VII: Auditory Identities in Britain
Chair: Thomas Mergel (Humboldt Universität Berlin)
John M. Picker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Boston)
Aural Anxieties and the Advent of Modernity
James Mansell (University of Manchester)
Sound and Selfhood in Early Twentieth-Century Britain
13:00 Lunch Break
14:30 Panel VIII: City Sounds Now and Then
Chair: Jan-Friedrich Missfelder (Univesität Zürich)
Uta Kornmeier/ Gaby Hartel (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin)
SFX and the City. The Perception of Urban Ambient Sound in London
Valeria Merlini/ Olaf Schäfer (Universität der Künste Berlin)
Symphony of a Metropolis A Dualistic Listening Experience
16:00 Concluding Discussion
Chair: Veit Erlmann (University of Texas at Austin)
17:00 End of Conference
Information on Funding of the Blankensee Colloquia through Cooperative Funds
In accord with the Berlin Senate, the Blankensee Colloquia are financed through ‘cooperative funds’. The program is sustained by the presidents and rectors of the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University Berlin), the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities), the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (Social Science Research Center Berlin) and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study Berlin). It is from among the entries in an annual idea-contest on the topic “Cultural and Social Change” that these officials select the winning proposal for a colloquium on the humanities and social sciences that is composed of scholars from around the world. The objective of the Blankensee Colloquia is to promote younger scholars from the region of Berlin-Brandenburg by allowing them to present and develop an innovative research area within the framework of an international conference that they themselves have organized. And it is in this way that the scholarly reputation of the region of Berlin-Brandenburg can be bolstered, that innovative research approaches may be supported, and that institutional cooperation in the region is to be fostered.
For more information see:http://www.wiko-berlin.de/index.php?id=95&L=1
Dr. Daniel Morat
Freie Universität Berlin
FB Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut
Koserstraße 20
D-14195 Berlin
Tel. +49/30/83852764
Fax +49/30/83856806
daniel.morat@fu-berlin.de
www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/fmi/mitglieder/morat.html
