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Sarah Adams

Sarah Adams

Sarah Adams

Biography:

My dissertation, “A Rhetorical History of Embodied Listening: Pedagogy, Performance, Technology,” examines and historicizes the embodied and vibrational form and effects of sonic information. In particular, my project examines the situation of classical music in the early twentieth century. While certain rhetorics of listening—like phonograph advertisements and conductor’s expectations during concerts—encouraged listeners to understand listening as an intellectual exercise, the pedagogical program of Eurhythmics taught students to listen with their entire bodies. In exploring the tensions between these listening practices as well as their resonances with the history of rhetorical education, I demonstrate that sonic information, and rhetoric more generally, necessitates a listening practice that engages the whole body.