Listening to the archive: Historical geographies of sound

• Published in: Geography compass Vol. 15; no. 11
• Main Author: della Dora, Veronica
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-11-2021
• Subjects: Acoustics; Archives & records; geographies of radio; Geography; historical geography; memory; sound; sound studies; soundscape
• ISSN: 1749-8198; 1749-8198
• DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12599

Sound is a fundamental dimension of human experience. However, its ephemeral nature poses specific challenges to historical geographers and other scholars concerned with the study of the past. The last two decades have nonetheless witnessed an increased interest in the spatialities of historical sounds and acoustic environments in geography and across the humanities by large. This article offers a brief overview of some of this work. In particular, it traces a cross‐disciplinary move from the study and preservation of past soundscapes to the study of their shifting perceptions, as well as increased attention to the aesthetic and affective qualities of past sounds and their complex poetics and politics. Rather than another subfield to be reinvented by geographers, I suggest that sonic geographies of the past are to be better understood and approached as a dynamic platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange.