Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

co-edited with Susan Strasser

“This collection…is multicultural historical analysis at its best.” — Journal of American History

Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, co-edited with Susan Strasser, is a pioneering collection of essays exploring the politics, technology, and social relations of sound in the twentieth century. It was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Contributors include: Eric D. Barry, Angela M. Blake, Alex Cummings, Christine Ehrick, David Goodman, David Hochfelder, Ann Elizabeth Pfau, Bill Kirkpatrick, Chris Rasmussen, Michael Stamm, and Derek W. Vaillant.

You can visit the University of Pennsylvania Press web page for the book here.

An interview with David about the book, recorded for a University of Pennsylvania Press podicast, can be heard here.

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CONTENTS:

Introduction: Thinking Historically About Sound and Sense
David Suisman

Part I: Affect and the Politics of Listening
1 Distracted Listening: On Not Making Sound Choices in the 1930s
David Goodman

2 ‘‘Her Voice a Bullet’’: Imaginary Propaganda and the Legendary Broadcasters of World War II
Ann Elizabeth Pfau and David Hochfelder

3 ‘‘Savage Dissonance’’: Gender, Voice, and Women’s Radio Speech in Argentina, 1930–1945
Christine Ehrick

Part II: Sonic Objects
4 Collectors, Bootleggers, and the Value of Jazz, 1930–1952
Alex Cummings

5 High-Fidelity Sound as Spectacle and Sublime, 1950–1961
Eric D. Barry

Part III: Hearing Order
6 Occupied Listeners: The Legacies of Interwar Radio for France During World War II
Derek W. Vaillant

7 An Audible Sense of Order: Race, Fear, and CB Radio on Los Angeles Freeways in the 1970s
Angela M. Blake

Part IV: Sound Commerce
8 ‘‘The People’s Orchestra’’: Jukeboxes as the Measure of Popular Musical Taste in the 1930s and 1940s
Chris Rasmussen

9 Sounds Local: The Competition for Space and Place in Early U.S. Radio
Bill Kirkpatrick

10 The Sound of Print: Newspapers and the Public Promotion of Early Radio Broadcasting in the United States
Michael Stamm

Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments