Jouili just finished a post-doctoral research position at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at Amsterdam University where she did research on the (pious) Islamic cultural and artistic scene in France and the UK. Finally, we will look at specific case studies from different regional settings that elucidate how Islamic soundscapes and forms of listening have come to be progressively addressed and refashioned by secular liberal governance, a process that has been exacerbated in the political context of the ongoing ‘War on Terror.’ In addition to the wide spectrum of theoretical and anthropological literature, the course will make use of various audio-visual materials. In this context, we will also explore the quick proliferation of modernized popular Islamic music genres throughout Muslim communities worldwide. It will particularly look at how (Islamic) ethics of listening have been reconfigured through the introduction of modern media technologies (Walter Benjamin Steven Connor Jonathan Sterne Charles Hirschkind), as well as through processes of commodification and influences of popular culture. The course will then examine the changing conceptions of listening in Islamic contexts from classical times to contemporary settings (Al-Ghazzali Jean During Martin Stokes). We will also consider the relation between listening and power (Jean-Luc Nancy Jacques Attali), especially in regard to modern secular sensibilities (Talal Asad, Eric Leigh Schmidt). In the early weeks of the course we will discuss different philosophical approaches to the question of the senses and (recent) Western philosophy’s re-discovery of the auditory sense (Aristotle, David Howes, Veit Erlmann). The course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of this tradition that builds upon a strong theoretical framework. The Islamic tradition, having placed from its inception heavy emphasis on the word and on listening to the word, is distinguished by a rich and ambiguous relation to aurality. And as scholar and musician Eidsheim explores various music technologies. She is currently producing both a monograph and a collaborative installation piece on the multi-sensorial experience of music. Her teaching and research interests include avant-garde and popular vocal practices from the 1950s to the present, focusing on issues of vocal timbre, the relationship between the body and the voice, and sound in its material manifestations. Nina Sun Eidsheim is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. How do senses other than hearing act on our perceptions of the sonic components of music? How have the senses been prioritized differently at different historical moments, and how have those prioritizations affected notions of value in musical culture? How may the changing values that we assign to each of our senses shape our perceptions of music and the ways in which we are affected by it? How have questions about human sensory capacity been posed, as both enabling and limiting conditions, in relation to knowledge? What kinds of relative virtues have been ascribed to different senses with regard to various types of knowledge and experience? Do currently available analytical methods and theoretical frameworks adequately facilitate such inquiry? What may constitute a musicology in the flesh? When one sense is called upon, secondary senses are also activated, and each contributes to our compound experience of music. Although music consists of sound waves and appeals primarily to hearing, our full range of senses interacts and converges in intricate ways.
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