Sound and Hearing

Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800. The programme for the academic year 2009-10 concludes our series on The Senses. Convenors: Surekha Davies (Birkbeck), Laura Gowing (KCL), Kate Hodgkin (University of East London), Michael Hunter (Birkbeck), Adam Sutcliffe (KCL). Seminars will take place in the Ecclesiastical History Room at the Institute of Historical Research on the following Thursdays at 5.30 p.m. All are welcome!

29 October 2009 Dr David R.M. Irving (Christ’s College, Cambridge)
Music and nascent notions of a global consciousness in the early
modern world

12 November 2009 Dr Arnold Hunt (British Library)
The ear and the eye in early modern preaching

26 November 2009 Dr Helen Berry (University of Newcastle)
Hearing the castrato: the limits of masculine performance

10 December 2009 Dr Margaret Pelling (Wellcome Unit, University of Oxford)
Barber's shop music: literary stereotype or social practice?

21 January 2010 Dr Michael Fleming (University of Huddersfield)
'Old English viols': what they were and where they went

4 February 2010 Dr Penelope Gouk (University of Manchester)
Theories of hearing in the Enlightenment: some English examples

18 February 2010 Katherine Hunt (London Consortium)
From 'allowed ceremonie' to 'enchanting melody': the changing sound of church bells in the English Reformation

4 March 2010 Stefan Putigny (KCL)
'Sounding British'; Song culture and British nationhood, 1718-63

18 March 2010 Dr Caroline Warman (Jesus College, Oxford)
'Ouïe difficile à expliquer': Diderot and the difficulty of explaining hearing
from the Lettre sur les sourds et muets (1751) to the Eléments de physiologie
(c.1780)