We are excited to announce the inaugural Boston University English Graduate Students Conference, NOISE: SILENCE & SOUND, to be held at Boston University on October 4th, 2024. 

What does it mean to “cut through the noise”? What about the adage to “make some noise”? Why, and when, do we perceive noisiness as a negative, versus as energizing and even empowering? We invite proposals for individual papers on the possibilities and perils of noisiness, its insights and implications. In an era often deemed ‘noisy,’ over-saturated with so-called content, what are the consequences of this over-stimulation? Is noise always a negative to be overcome, or can this excess be read positively? How has noise been leveraged to silence, and how might it counteract silencing? How can noise disrupt, disturb or trouble? In what ways do noises reconfigure our perceptions of sound or voice, of how we pay attention and to what?

We welcome graduate students in English, Comparative Literature, Media Studies, Film Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, African-American Studies, and other related disciplines to join us in considering these questions and more.

Topics may include:

• Noise as a racialized, gendered, classed, sexualized phenomenon 

• The phenomena of voices and tones in texts

• Digital noise and noisy technologies

• Fugitive noise versus sanctioned discourse and narratives

• Noise-makers (rebels, troublemakers); sound and noise as protest

• The sonic qualities of the written word 

• Differences between noise, sound, speech

• The politics of silence, of being silent or silenced

• The rise and circulation of the concept of the “silent majority” 

• Noise as a methodology

• White noise, ASMR, and the potential therapeutic functions of noise and sound

• The concept of the chatterbox and the disciplinary functions of labeling a person as “loud” or “noisy” 

• Pedagogies that embrace noise and/or silence; sitting with silence 

Please send 250-word abstracts to Morgan Lehofer at lehoferm@bu.edu by 08/01/2024.