Victorian SoundingsAuckland University of TechnologyAuckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, 25-26 June 2026 

Scholars of the nineteenth century have produced ground-breaking work in the interdisciplinary field of sound studies since its inception, and continue to as they help push the boundaries of the field and expand it in intriguing ways. Scholars are now exploring the importance of sound in connection to other areas, such as the interdependence of speaking, writing, reading, and listening; the sonic interconnections between the arts, science, and new technologies; and acoustic mediations in imperial encounters with indigenous peoples.

We invite broad interpretations for Conference papers, taking into account its innumerable literal and figurative associations. For instance, the OED tells us that the word  ‘soundings’ not only signifies the literal giving forth of sounds, but also incorporates the more abstract notion of the ‘sounding board,’ which is related to “information or evidence ascertained as a preliminary step before taking action.” Likewise, “taking soundings” and “sounding lines” refer to “the determination of any physical property at a depth in the sea or at a height of the atmosphere.”

It is time to sound out the diverse articulations of aurality afresh, and we invite papers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including literature, art, philosophy, music, and history, that explore how sound and soundings were represented and contested in the global nineteenth century.

Keynote speaker: Professor Jason Camlot, Concordia University Research Chair in Literature and Sound Studies.

Topics might include but are not limited to:

• Silence & sound, noise, echoes & time

• The acoustic colonial contact zone & resistance

• Soundscapes: natural, urban, rural, aquatic or atmospheric

• Eavesdropping, overhearing, gossip & rumour

• Sounds of machines, trains, underground, clocks, whistles, instruments,                                        speaking tubes

• Music: harmony, rhythm, discord, soundful, cultural, waiata, instruments, orchestras, singers, songs, & hymns

• Non-linguistic utterance & the body: laughing, burping, whispering, yelling, auscultation, the sensorium

• Cultural soundings & listening or not listening: indigenous, metropolitan, colonial settler

• Aurality: the interdependence of speaking, writing, & reading

• Taking soundings, sounding out the new

• Victorian table talk, conversation, etiquette

• Hearing & writing accents, languages, elocution

• Oratory & public speaking; sermons, prayers, debates, speeches, lectures, eloquence, disfluency, glossophobia

• Performance & theatre: entertainment, ritual, music hall, concert hall, salon

• Hearing voices: uncanny, divine, evil, madness, echoes, God, Satan, ghosts, supernatural

• Poetic and narrative soundings

• Deaf studies & Victorian society, nineteenth-century sign language

• Sounds as warnings: lighthouses, sound signals

• Technologies of recording sound: the phonograph, telegraph, Morse Code, sound boxes, Pitman, etc.

• Sounding fits, speaking in tongues, & trances

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words, along with a title and a 100-word biographical note to Dr Helen Blythe, at avsa2026@aut.ac.nz by 31 January 2026.