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| Semester | fall semester 2019 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers |
Luregn Lenggenhager (luregn.lenggenhager@unibas.ch)
James Lawrence Merron (james.merron@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | Amidst silences in African history (Depelchin 2005), collaborative listening (Scott 2001) and whether the subaltern can ‘speak’ (Spivak 2010), this course positions sound archives as an anchor for interdisciplinary African Studies. Drawing mostly from resources in Basel, we take up ‘noise’ as a conceptual point-of-departure, creating room for what is often ignored and left-out: the background, the disturbance, the anomalies. In this exploratory course, we prepare participants to find information in what is often taken for granted. We start at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute where research in Switzerland and South Africa uncovers the relationship between noise and human health (Röösli et al. 2014). This raises both conceptual and material questions: How do scientists measure and visualize sound? How is ‘noise’ constituted? Through what means is the archive constructed and maintained? How does gender emerge as a unit of analysis in this context. We turn next to the Basler Afrika Bibliographien, a resource center for Namibian and Southern African history. Using their sound archives, we will probe into the material aspects of what constitutes ‘noise’, interpreting the phenomenon through concepts such as ‘sonic cultures’ (Biwa 2019), ‘phonics’ (Mowitt 2015), and ‘listening’ (Mtshemla et al. 2016). Situating this within broader discussions taking place in the humanities and social sciences (Schwartz 2011, LaBelle 2015), this course concludes with an account of ‘ambient infrastructures’ in African urban contexts (Larkin 2018) |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Modul: Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Media and Imagination (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Methoden der Gesellschaftswissenschaften (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Zentrum für Afrikastudien |