In this final episode of Season 4 two graduate students, Hannah Hunter and Bailey Hilgren, chat with Claudia about some of the core themes and tensions to emerge from the season. This includes a focus on sound methodologies, such as issues with how we collect animal sounds to how (or even indeed whether) there is something special about sound in trying to understand the lives of animals.
Date Recorded: 2 May 2022
Bailey Hilgren is a musicologist and sound studies scholar about to begin a PhD in ethnomusicology at New York University. Her most recent research project traced environmentalists’ construction of a wilderness area in northern Minnesota as a primarily silent place, an idea and legal practice that has undermined non-human animal agency and limited Ojibwe sovereignty in related but distinct ways. She holds master’s degrees in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon and Historical Musicology from Florida State University, and she completed undergraduate studies in biology and music performance from Gustavus Adolphus College.
Hannah Hunter is a PhD Candidate at the Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory at Queen's University. Her research explores the intersections of animals, sounds, and extinction through the case study of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Hannah is particularly interested in how we can build relationships with distant and lost beings through sound, and how sound may be a potent force for representing and challenging the sixth mass extinction. Connect with Hannah via email (hannah.hunter@queensu.ca) or on Twitter (@HannahfHunter)
Featured:
Animal Musicalities: Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening by Rachel Mundy; Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies by Dylan Robinson; The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction by Jonathan Sterne; Introduction to Special Issue Ethics in Multispecies Research by Lauren van Patter and Heather Rosenfeld; Audible Infrastructures: Music, Sound, Media edited by Kyle Devine and Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier; Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit.
Thank you to A.P.P.L.E for sponsoring this podcast; the Sonic Arts Studio and the Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, and Hannah Hunter for the Animal Highlight.
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