A Companion to Sound in German-Speaking Cultures

Explores sonic events and auditory experiences in German-speaking contexts from the Middle Ages to the digital age, opening up new understandings.

As a sub-discipline of cultural studies, sound studies is a firmly established field of inquiry, examining how sonic events and auditory experiences unfold in culturally and historically contingent life situations.
Responding to new questions in sound studies in the context of German-speaking cultures, and incorporating up-to-date methodologies, this Companion explores the significance of sound from the Middle Ages and the classical-romantic period through high-capitalist industrial modernity, the Nazi period and the Holocaust, and postwar Germany to the present digital age. The volume examines how sonic events are represented in literary fiction, radio productions, cinema, newsreels, documentaries, sound art, museum exhibitions, and other media, drawing for this inquiry on philosophy, aesthetics, literary criticism, musicology, art theory, and cultural studies. Each essay is a case study - of persons, events, and sonic, visual, or textual artifacts - situating them in wider contexts of culture, history, and politics. The volume not only revisits well-known topics from new angles, but seeks especially to explore neglected issues on the cultural periphery. It assembles original essays by leaders in the field and emerging scholars from the United States and Europe. Offering an advanced introduction to the topic, the Companion is addressed to anyone interested in how the analysis of sound phenomena opens up new understandings of German-speaking cultures.

ROLF J. GOEBEL is Distinguished Professor of German, Emeritus, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

ALBRECHT CLASSEN is University Distinguished Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona; he received the title of Grand Knight Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Three Lions in 2017, in recognition of his outstanding service to German studies.

Larson Powell is Curator's Professor of Film Studies at University of Missouri, Kansas City.