For 2011-12 I will be a Fellow at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities, as part of a group of people researching and discussing the topic of sound.  You can read about my own project, Sound and Popular Discipline, 1950 - Present, here.  Basically I'm interested in understanding what kinds of new forms of community emerge around the production of globally distributed new dance musics such as hip-hop or house, and what particular qualities of the sound-world they draw on.  How can people be together through the way they participate in making and listening to sound?  How does this change when digital sound making technologies are used? And how does this change when these sound making and listening technologies are globally distributed to so that anyone might participate in making or sharing them?

The first semester was great: I think we're all recognizing how vast the study of sound is as a discipline -- we've had presentations on everything from popular song in the Egyptian revolution of 1919, to Howlin' Wolf's "Back Door Man", to Cuban radio, to Thoreau's nature-sound.  More to come, including a sound studies conference in April.