Testing Hearing

Reviews / Votes

[Testing Hearings] narratives are so convincing and insightful because they are rooted in long-standing interdisciplinarytraditions ofresearch in studies of science and technology, urban studies, music an musicology, and because they draw on rigorous research in archives that have been maderelevant through a focus on sound and hearing. The authors are able to ask new questions about sound and hearing because they can comfortably navigate claims and approaches at the intersections of fields of which they have intimate knowledge. * Karin Bijsterveld, Journal of the Royal Musical Association * This book shows that testing has long been critically embedded at the level of infrastructures...The second major intervention of this volume is its attention to the epistemic value of the aural to scientific practice. By bringing sound studies into conversation with history of science, this collection provides a new framework for analyzing the "co-creation of modern epistemic and auditory cultures" (p. 2). This broad framework aligns with a global focus, and this breadth reveals how science happens outside of traditional testing arenas. Testing hearing takes place not in laboratories but in laundromats, on streets, in submarines, studios, stages, and societies. * Coreen McGuire, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society * Highly Recommended. * M. Anderson, Southern Oregon University, CHOICE * That hearing norms are 'built into all manner of audio apparatus, from telephones to stereo speakers' is one of many insights in this intriguing interdisciplinary collection. Historians, having too long focused on technology's visual aspects, can surely benefit from understanding the configurational ramifications of the aural too. Testing Hearing helpfully turns our attention to consider how the power relations of listening and hearing are mediated by technologies ... the historicist volume reviewed here breaks new ground in focusing on the epistemic and politically charged issues of testing hearing. * Graeme Gooday, Technology & Culture * Comprehensive, multifaceted and absorbing, Testing Hearing is a major achievement, destined to become a classic of sound studies and beyond. * Veit Erlmann, University of Texas at Austin; Editor, Sound Studies * Testing Hearing explores 'the co-creation of epistemic and auditory cultures-indeed, the creation of modern aurality'...Testing Hearing has a thematic architecture, with sections focusing on the history of tests that screened human hearers 'out' and 'in'...Testing Hearing is also exemplary in its involvement of two experts in testing in the sciences, Hans-Joerg Rheinberger and Trevor Pinch, who offer supplementary commentaries on the collection' chapters from, respectively, the perspective of the history of science and that of science and technology studies (STS). * Karin Bijsterveld, Royal Musical Association *