Sound positions individuals as social subjects. The presence of human beings, animals, objects, or technologies reverberates into the spaces we inhabit and produces distinct soundscapes that render social practices, group associations, and socio-cultural tensions audible. The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen unites interdisciplinary perspectives on the social dimensions of sound in audiovisual and literary environments. The essays in the collection discuss soundtracks for shared values, group membership, and collective agency, and engage with the subversive functions of sound and sonic forms of resistance in American literature, film, and TV.

Nathalie Aghoro is a postdoctoral researcher at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany with an interest in auditory culture, postmodern and contemporary literature, media theory, and social justice. Her book Sounding the Novel: Voice in Twenty-First Century American Fiction (2018) examines the sonic mediality of voice in the works of Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, Jennifer Egan, and Jonathan Safran Foer.