Course Details in 2026/27 Session

Module Title	LH Sound Studies
School	Lan, Cult, Art Hist & Music
Department	Music
Module Code	09 38731
Module Lead	Christopher Haworth
Level	Honours Level
Credits	20
Semester	Semester 2
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions	None
Contact Hours	Seminar-20 hours Guided independent study-180 hours Total: 200 hours
Exclusions
Description	Sound Studies began life as a corrective to the academic humanities’ tendency to reduce the consideration of the sounding world to the idealised case of music. Since then, almost all aspects of music studies have grown to accommodate its methods and principles, from historical musicology to contemporary composition. But what is sound studies and what are its key concerns? What can sound studies offer to the study of music in the twenty first century? Topics may include: sound and history; voice and vocality; sound and disability; sound and identity; theories of listening; and other topics that address sound in relation to society, culture and media. As well as using sound to think anew about music, we will use sound to rethink assessment conventions, experimenting with such formats as audio essays and narrated soundscape recordings alongside more traditional textual scholarship.
Learning Outcomes	By the end of the Module, students should be able to: Demonstrate an advanced grasp of contemporary debates in sound studies Analyse sound and its entanglement with media, culture and society using a mixture of methods Explore a mixture of scholarly formats for the analysis of sound, including multimodal scholarship
Assessment	38731-01 : 2,500 word Research Project : Coursework (50%) 38731-02 : Multi-Media Project (5mins) : Practical (30%) 38731-03 : 1,000 word Listening Diary : Coursework (20%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions	Assessment: Research project: Coursework, 2500 words (50%) Multi-media project (submitted as video/audio and either played in class or over an online platform): Practical, 5 minutes (30%) Listening diary: Coursework, 1000 words (20%) Method of Reassessment: Resubmission of failed component.
Other
Reading List