Essays

SELECTED SCHOLARLY ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS:

PLEASE NOTE — these texts are posted for scholarly, personal use only under Canadian fair dealing guidelines. Any academic citation or excerpting must be with proper attribution. For permission for any other use, please contact me or the publisher.

Eloge Trevor Pinch Isis 114:2 (June 2023): 413-5.

(coauthored with Mehak Sawhney) “The Acousmatic Question and the Will to Datafy: Otter.ai, Low-Resource Languages, and the Politics of Machine Listening.” Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies 8:1-2 (Fall 2022): 288-306.

“Is Machine Listening Listening?” Communication +1 9:1 (October 2022), https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1111&context=cpo

…and this is my voice: autopathophonography and the politics of variable voice.” Canadian Journal of Disability Studies 10:2 (Fall 2021), https://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/article/view/804

Keyword: 33  RPM.”  Journal of Popular Music Studies, 33:3 (Fall 2021), 8-10.

Co-authored with Elena Razlogova, “Tuning Sound for Infrastructures: Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Cultural Politics of Audio Mastering,” Cultural Studies 35:2 (2021).  

Co-authored with Mara Mills, “Second Rate: Tempo Regulation, Helium Speech, and ‘Information Overload,’” Triple Canopy #26 (2020): https://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/issues/26/contents/second-rate

Co-authored with Mara Mills, “Aural Speed Reading: Some Historical Bookmarks,” PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association) 135:2 (2020): 401-411.

The Software Passes the Test When the User Fails It: Constructing Digital Models of Analog Signal Processors,” Testing Hearing, eds. Viktoria Traczyk, Mara Mills and Alexandra Hui, 159-185. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Ballad of the Dork-o-Phone: Toward a Crip Vocal Technoscience,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies 4:2 (2019): 179-189.

Co-authored with Zoë de Luca, “In Museums, There is No Hearing Subject,” Curator: The Museum Journal 62:3 (July 2019): 301-306.

Multimodal Scholarship in World Soundscape Project Composition: Toward a Different Media-Theoretical Legacy (Or: The WSP as OG DH),” in Milena Droumeva and Randolph Jordan, eds., Sound, Media, Ecology, 85-109. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2019.

Co-authored with Elena Razlogova, “Machine Learning in Context, or Learning from LANDR: Artificial Intelligence and the Platformization of Music Mastering,” Social Media + Society 5:2 (April-June 2019): 1-18.

Coauthored with Li Cornfeld and Victoria Simon. “Legitimating Media: Shakespeare’s Awkward Travels through Twitter and Video Games,” Communication, Culture and Critique 11:3 (2018): 418-435.

Spectral Objects: On the Fetish Character of Music Technologies,” Sound Objects, eds. Rey Chow and James Steintrager, 94-109.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

“How Do We Intervene in the Stubborn Persistence of Patriarchy in Communication Scholarship?” Forthcoming in some ICA handbook or another. I am 4th author.  Co-written with Vicki Mayer, Andrea Press and Deb Verhoeven.

Co-authored with Mara Mills, “Dismediation: Three Proposals, Six Tactics,” in Disability Media Studies, eds. Elizabeth Ellcessor and William Kirkpatrick, 365-378. New York: New York University Press, 2017.

Shakespeare Processing: Fragments from a History,” ELH (English Literary History) 83:2 (Summer 2016): 319-344.

Analog,” Digital Keywords, ed. Ben Peters, 31-44. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Much of the book is available via Culture Digitally.

“Afterword: Sound Pedagogy,” The Auditory Culture Reader 2.0, eds. Michael Bull and Les Back, 453-457. New York: Bloombury, 2016.(pdf coming)

Coauthored with Dylan Mulvin, “Scenes from an Imaginary Country: Test Images and the American Color Television Standard,” Television and New Media 17:1 (January 2016): 21-43. The preferred version is the Scalar version linked to in the title.  The .pdf version is here.

“The Example: Some Historical Considerations,” Between the Humanities and the Digital, eds. David Theo Goldberg and Patrik Svensson, 17-33. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015. (pdf coming)

Space Within Space: Artificial Reverb and the Detachable Echo,” Grey Room 60 (Summer 2015): 110-131.

“Reflections on the MP3 Format: Interview with Jonathan Sterne,” Geert Lovink, Computational Culture #4 (November 2014): (http://computationalculture.net/article/reflections-on-the-mp3-format).

Coedited with Dylan Mulvin, “Media Hot and Cold,” Feature Special Section of the International Journal of Communication, Volume 8 (2014).

My contribution: coauthored with Dylan Mulvin, “Temperature is a Media Problem,” International Journal of Communication Volume 8 (2014)

Coauthored with Dylan Mulvin, “The Low Acuity for Blue: Perceptual Technics and American Color Television,” Journal of Visual Culture 13:2 (August 2014): 118-138.

There Is No Music Industry,” Media Industries 1:1 (Summer 2014).

Media Analysis Beyond Content,” Journal of Visual Culture – Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media at 50 – 13:1 (Spring 2014): 100-103.

What Do We Want?  Materiality!  When Do We Want It?  Now!” In Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality and Society, eds. Tarleton Gillespie, Kirsten Foote and Pablo Boczkowski, 119-128.  Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014.

Keyword: Journal,” Journal of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (published online 5 July 2013).  DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2013.812598

Coauthored with Tara Rodgers, “The Poetics of Signal Processing,” Differences 22:2-3 (Summer/Fall 2011): 31-53. 

“The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality,” Canadian Journal of Communication 36:2 (Summer 2011):207-225. (Original link here.)

“The Politics of Academic Labor in Communication Studies”, Feature Special Section of the International Journal of Communication, Volume 5 (2011).

My contribution: The Politics of Academic Labor in Communication Studies: A Re-Introduction 

(now available as an e-book via The Annenberg Press)

Coauthored with Mitchell Akiyama, “‘The Recording that Never Wanted to be Heard’ and Other Stories of Sonification.” In The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, eds. Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld, 544-60.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

“The Pedagogy of the Job Market,” Journal of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6:4 (December 2009): 421-424.

“The Cat Telephone,” The Velvet Light Trap #64 (Fall 2009): 83-84. Content warning: my cats do not approve of this essay.

The Preservation Paradox in Digital Audio.” In Sound Souvenirs, eds. Karin Bijsterveld and José Van Dijk, 55-65. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2009.

James Carey and the Resistance to Cultural Studies in North America Cultural Studies 23:2 (March 2009): 283-286.

Enemy Voice,Social Text #96 25:3 (September 2008): 79-100.

Being ‘in the True’ of Sound StudiesMusic, Sound and the Moving Image 2:2 (Autumn 2008): 163-167.

Coauthored with Jeremy Morris, Michael Brendan Baker and Ariana Moscote Freire, “The Politics of ‘Podcasting,’” Fibreculture #13 (July 2008).

Out With the Trash: On the Future of New Technologies.” In Residual Media, ed. Charles Acland, 16-31.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

Media or Instruments? Yes.” Offscreen 11:8-9 (Aug/Sept 2007).

The Death and Life of Digital Audio,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 31:4 (December 2006): 338-348.

The MP3 as Cultural Artifact,” New Media and Society 8:5 (November 2006): 825-842.

Coauthored with Emily Raine, “Command Tones: Digitization and Sounded Time,” First Monday 11:9 (September 2006).

Afterword: On the Future of Music.” In Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture, ed. Michael D. Ayers, 255-263.  New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

What’s Digital in Digital Music?”  In Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication, eds. Paul Messaris and Lee Humphreys, 95-109.  New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

The Historiography of Cyberculture.”  In Cyberculture Studies: Current Terrains, Future Directions, eds. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari, 17-29.  New York: New York University Press, 2006.

Communication as Techné.” In Communication as. . . : Perspectives on Theory, eds. Gregory J. Shepherd, Jeffrey St. John, and Ted Striphas, 91-98.  Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005.

“Urban Media and the Politics of Sound Space,” in “Sound in Art and Culture,” a special issue of Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain #9 (Fall 2005): 6-15.

Digital Media and Disciplinarity,” The Information Society 21:4 (Fall 2005): 249-256.

C. Wright Mills, the Bureau for Applied Social Research, and Meaning of Critical Scholarship.” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 5:1 (Winter 2005): 65-94.

Academia Pro Bono,” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 4:2 (May 2004): 219-222.

The Burden of Culture.” In The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, ed. Michael Bérubé, 80-102. Malden: Basil Blackwell, 2004.

Coauthored with Carol Stabile, “Using Women as Middle Men: The Real Promise of ICTs,” Feminist Media Studies 3:3 (Fall 2003): 364-368.

Bourdieu, Technique and Technology,” Cultural Studies 17:3/4 (May/July 2003): 367-389.

Cultural Policy Studies and the Problem of Political Representation.” The Communication Review 5:1 (Spring 2002): 59-89.

The Computer Race Goes to Class.” In Race In Cyberspace, eds. Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert Rodman, 191-212. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Going Public: Rock Aesthetics in the American Political Field.” In Sound Identities:Popular Music and the Cultural Politics of Education, eds. Cameron McCarthy, Glenn Hudak, Sylvia Allegretto, Paula Saukko, and Shawn Miklaucic, 289-315. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.

Television Under Construction: American Television and the Problem of Distribution 1926-1962.” Media, Culture and Society 21:3 (July 1999): 503-530.

Thinking the Internet: Cultural Studies vs. The Millennium.” In Doing Internet Research, ed. Steve Jones, 257-288. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1998.

Sounds Like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architectonics of Commercial Space.” Ethnomusicology 41:1 (Winter 1997): 22-50.

OTHER WRITING

My blog.

2011-12 Flow Column

What If Interactivity is the New Passivity?

Formatted to Fit Your Screen

Player Hater

“A Step Toward Fixing Peer Reviews: Sign Them,” guest post, Antenna

Selected Essays in Bad Subjects

My Canadian Confusion

Notes for the Next Media War

United We Stand: Fresh Hoagies Daily (coauthored with Carrie Rentschler and Carol Stabile)

Scratch Me and I Bleed Champaign

All Bad Subjects back issues