Educational Studies
A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association
ISSN: 0013-1946 (Print) 1532-6993 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/heds20
Special Issue Echoes, Reverberations, Silences, and
Noise: Sonic Possibilities in Education
Walter S. Gershon & Peter Appelbaum
To cite this article: Walter S. Gershon & Peter Appelbaum (2016) Special Issue Echoes,
Reverberations, Silences, and Noise: Sonic Possibilities in Education, Educational Studies, 52:4,
390-393, DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2016.1191238
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2016.1191238
Published online: 15 Jul 2016.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 31
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=heds20
Download by: [University of Western Ontario]
Date: 02 November 2016, At: 04:38
EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 52(4), 390–393, 2016
C American Educational Studies Association
Copyright
ISSN: 0013-1946 print / 1532-6993 online
DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2016.1191238
CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue
Echoes, Reverberations, Silences, and Noise:
Sonic Possibilities in Education
Guest Editors:
Walter S. Gershon, School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies, Kent State University
(wgershon@kent.edu)
Peter Appelbaum, School of Education, Arcadia University (appelbap@arcadia.edu)
The purpose of this special issue is to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the ways that
sound considerations can significantly contribute to the field of Educational Foundations. An
interdisciplinary and international field, Sound Studies has tackled subfields and themes familiar
to those who work in educational foundations. For example, there has been work on sound
histories (Smith, 2004), sound philosophies (Voegelin, 2010), sound culture (Bull & Back, 2003),
sound/race (Weheliye, 2005) and sound methodologies (Cobussen, Schultze, & Meelberg, 2013).
As noted in a recent article in the twentieth anniversary issue of Qualitative Inquiry (Daza &
Gershon, 2015), there has also been a burgeoning attention to sound scholarship in education
(e.g., Appelbaum, 2007, in press; Gershon, 2011a, 2013, in press). Similar to a move made in
curriculum studies (Gershon, 2011b), contributors to this issue will attend to and otherwise explore
sound possibilities for educational theory, policy and practice. To these ends, contributors will
interrupt both everyday, commonsense understandings and longstanding theoretical foundations
that tend to be predicated on the ocular (Kim-Cohen, 2009), This special issue is open to the many
forms for documenting contradictions and trends, theoretical elaboration, empirical scholarship,
and methodological innovation with and through sound concepts and tools.
Regardless of their origin or interpretation, sounds are theoretically and practically foundational to educational experiences. They outline the fluid, porous boundaries of educational
ecologies as they often are the means through which knowledges are passed from one person to
another. The broad range of scholarship that falls under the umbrella of educational foundations
has deep, long-standing history with the sonic. This long history can be seen, for example, from
the late 19th century to the present, as in Anna Julia Cooper’s (1892) orchestral framing of A
Voice from the South, By a Black Woman from the South, and W. E. B. DuBois’ (publications
1899–1963) frequent use of musical notation of songs as a means to articulate trajectories of
scholarship, to ongoing conversations about voice and silence, and of traditionally marginalized
CALL FOR PAPERS
391
populations (e.g., Landsman, Salcedo, & Gorski, 2015; Weis & Fine, 1993). In these cases, sound
was not a naı̈ve nor a simplistic reduction to exclusionary practices that only address a “hearing”
community, but rather a sense-expansive form, extending notions and characteristics of sound
useful to the analysis of educational theory and practice (e.g., reverberation, echo, medium, and
production).
In addition, sound ideas are found in a wide variety of scholarship that informs educational
foundations, such as: the varied work of Ted T. Aoki (Pinar & Irwin [Aoki], 2004); Christopher
Emdin (2010) and Bettina Love’s (2012) seminal books and continuing integration of scholarship
and activism in hip-hop education; and voices raised in activism and social justice more broadly,
including Audre Lorde’s (1984) Sister Outsider, Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiner’s (2009)
Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice, Dorothy Aguilera Black Bear
and John W. Tippeconnic III’s (2015) Voices of Resistance and Renewal. Previous scholarship
in Educational Studies can also be understood in a similar vein, working at the intersection of
educational foundations and sound studies (e.g., Sterne, 2012). Examples include Dan W. Butin’s
(2005) article, “Is anyone listening? Educational policy perspectives on the social foundations of
education”; Emery Petchauer’s (2012) piece, “Sampling memories: Using hip-hop aesthetics to
learn from urban schooling experiences;” and Z. Lesley Shore’s (2000) review essay “Girls learning, women teaching: Dancing to different drummers.” However, most educational scholarship
has tended to ground itself in (alternative) metaphors for perception. Similarly, it has been common to construct new approaches to educational theory based on the metaphorical implications
of listening or sound production.
The concern with extended metaphors is both their insights and their limitations. On the one
hand, a shift from visual to the sonic opens up new ideas. On the other hand, both the visual
and the sonic might be considered trapped in an ideology of perception as a severely proscriptive
conception of knowledge and coming to know (Appelbaum, 1999). This issue embraces Eleni
Ikoniadou’s (2014) admonition not to “fetishize the sonic” (p. 4), recognizing the danger of
attending to the wide variety of sonic possibilities without incidentally arguing for some kind of
sonic infallibility or, perhaps even worse, superiority (Gershon, 2016). Rather, we seek submissions that nurture the wide variety of sound possibilities that potentially articulate educational
ways of being and knowing outside the ocular understandings that often dominate educational
foundations, even when arguing for the sonic, and that further use sound studies as a window
into postperceptual discourse. The extended metaphor as a model is only one exciting application
of sound in educational foundations. Sound arts provide unique strategies and tactics for collecting data, carrying out the composition of multiple elements and processes, mediating social
relations, and expression of self. Sound is material, the subject of study, cultural/social process,
and environmental ecology (Feld, 1982). Thus, although there is, indeed, a history of scholarship
in educational foundations in what we are calling sound foundations, this is the first significant
move to highlight sound foundations in our field and from an international perspective.
Contributions that bring scholars from different backgrounds and theoretical positions into
conversation are encouraged to address the following kinds of questions:
• What does sound foundations mean to you? Why? Sound might be data, source, method
(epistemological, axiological, ethical, etc.), metaphor, analytic tool, ideological critique, etc.
• What do these shifts in terms, theories, and practices have to do with global trends (e.g., capitalism, neoliberalism, democratization, etc.); other critical theories (feminism, queer theory,
392
•
•
•
•
CALL FOR PAPERS
critical race theory, Marxism, etc.); and different methodological approaches, specifically in
the foundations of education (e.g. history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, etc.)?
How do global diaspora communities of sound and sound art inform transnational studies of
educational theory, practice, policy, and the conceptualization of these forms of scholarship?
How do different geographical contexts, actors/bodies, and herstories/histories matter?
Given that some forms of sound studies merge with sound art, music, etc., who can/should be
doing this work?
What is/should be the implications of this work? Who benefits? Who doesn’t?
How is your work/theory/practice situated within and against that of articles already published
in both the world of sound studies more broadly construed, and in the journal Educational
Studies specifically, and the field or educational foundations, more broadly understood?
Please e-mail a 500 word abstract to the editors at SoundFoundationsEditors@gmail.com
no later than December 15, 2016. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed and authors informed of a
decision on the submitted abstracts no later than January 16, 2017.
Authors of the selected abstracts will be asked to submit blind manuscripts to
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/heds. All manuscripts, including references and notes, should
be 6000–8000 words and submitted no later then July 3, 2017.
All manuscripts are subject to the journal’s blind peer review process. Pending review
and the editors’ approval, selected articles will be published in this special issue of Educational Studies. Of note, authors whose abstracts and manuscripts are NOT selected for the
Sound special issue may have their manuscript considered for publication in a regular issue of the journal, subject to the journal’s blind peer review process. The special issue is
scheduled to be published in Volume 54. Articles should follow the journal style guidelines of APA 6th edition (see information for authors at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/
authorSubmission?page=instructions&journalCode=heds20).
We also encourage reviews of books on these subjects. For more information about submitting
a book review contact the guest editors. Reviews should be approximately 2,500 words.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Walter S. Gershon (wgershon@kent.edu); Peter Appelbaum (appelbap@arcadia.edu)
Timeline
Call Out: Spring 2016
Deadline for 500-word abstract: December 15, 2016
Authors informed of decision on abstract: January16, 2017
Deadline for manuscripts (6000–8000 words): July 3, 2017
Review process and editorial feedback to authors: September 4, 2017
Final manuscripts: November 20, 2017
Submit special issue to journal: December 18, 2017
CALL FOR PAPERS
393
REFERENCES
Aguilera Black Bear, D., & Tippeconnic III, J. W. (Eds.). (2015). Voices of resistance and rewnewal: Indigenous leadership
in education. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Appelbaum, P. (1999). The stench of perception and the cacophony of mediation. For the Learning of Mathematics, 19(2),
11–18.
Appelbaum, P. (2007). Children’s books for grownup teachers: Reading and writing curriculum theory. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Appelbaum, P. (in press). Sounding curriculum: Learning and unlearning with acoustemology. NY: Routledge.
Bull, M., & Back, L. (Eds.). (2003). The auditory culture reader. Oxford: Berg.
Butin, D. (2005). Is anyone listening? Education policy perspectives on the social foundations of education. Educational
Studies, 38(3), 286–297.
Cobussen, M., Schultze, H., & Meelberg, V. (2013). Towards new sonic epistemologies [Special Issue]. Journal of Sonic
Studies, 4(1).
Cooper, A. J. (1892). A voice from the South (by a Black woman from the South). Xenia: OH: Aldine.
Daza, S., & Gershon, W. S. (2015). Beyond ocular horizons: Sound, silence and sonification as inquiry. [Special Issue:
20th Anniversary]. Qualitative Inquiry, 21(7), 639–644.
Emdin, C. (2010). Urban science education for the hip-hop generation. Rotterdam, NL: Sense.
Feld, S. (1982). Sound and Sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics, and song in Kaluli expression. University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Gershon, W. S. (2011a). Embodied knowledge: Sounds as educational systems. [Special Issue: Sensual Curriculum].
Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 27(2), 66–81.
Gershon, W. S. (2011b). Sound curriculum: Recognizing the field. In R. Navqi & H. Schmidt (Eds.), Thinking about and
enacting curriculum in “frames of war (pp. 89–120).” Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Gershon, W. S. (2013). Vibrational affect: Sound theory and practice in qualitative research. Cultural Studies ←→Critical
Methodologies, 13(4), 257–262.
Gershon, W. S. (2016). Affect, trust, and dignity: Ontological possibilities and material consequences for a philosophy
of educational resonance. Annual Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society.
Gershon, W. S. (in press). Sound curriculum: Sonic studies in educational theory, method, and practice. NY: Routledge.
Ikoniadou, E. (2014). The rhythmic event: Art, media, and the sonic. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kim-Cohen, S. (2009). In the blink of an ear: Towards a non-cochlear sonic arts. New York, NY: Continuum.
Landsman, J., Salcedo, R. M., & Gorski, P. C. (2015). Voices for diversity and social justice: A literary education
anthology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches by Audre Lorde. New York: Ten Speed Press.
Love, B. L. (2012). Hip hop’s li’l sistas speak: Negotiating identities and politics in the New South. New York: Peter
Lang.
Petchauer, E. (2012). Sampling memories: Using hip-hop aesthetics to learn from urban schooling experiences. Educational Studies, 48(2), 137–155.
Pinar, W., & Irwin, R. [Aoki] (Eds.). (2004). Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Quinn, T., & Meiners, E. R. (2009). Queers organizing for publication and justice. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Smith, M. M. (2004). Hearing history: A reader. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Shore, L. (2000). Girls learning, women teaching: Dancing to different drummers. Educational Studies, 31(2), 132–145.
Sterne, J. (Ed.). (2012). The sound studies reader. New York, NY: Routledge.
Vogelin, S. (2010). Listening to noise and silence: Towards a philosophy of sound art. New York, NY: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Weheliye, A. (2005). Phonographies: Grooves in Afro-Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Weis, L., & Fine, M. (Eds.). (1993). Beyond silenced voices: Class, race, and gender in United States schools. Albany,
NY: SUNY Press.