Campus Soundwalk

What happens when we prioritize listening, our aural perception or our environment? How does the ear capture and conceive of space and our surroundings? In what ways might we interpret the sonic environment? How are we contributors to the composition of that environment? These are some of the questions that will orient our soundwalk as we move through UBC campus.

The soundwalk starts at Sopron Gate (at Main Mall just north of Agronomy) and ends at Green College. Our leisurely walk will last approximately one hour, and will be followed by 30 minutes of conversation in the Green College Coach House. The soundwalk will happen rain or shine, so please wear appropriate clothing and footwear.

We invite you to read “Soundwalking” by Hildegard Westerkamp in advance of the walk, but the reading is optional and you are welcome to join without any preparation! Following the soundwalk, we will hold the official launch party for the 2023-2024 Sound Silence Power thematic series. Join us for a reception and book giveaway to celebrate the launch of the series. We’ll raffle off copies of our invited speakers’ monographs to celebrate the fantastic lineup.

Please note the special start time and place for this event. 

This event is co-hosted with the Sound and the Humanities Research Cluster, UBC.

Since 2006, Duncan McHugh has co-taught LFS 400, a podcasting/audio storytelling course at the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems, where he works as a Digital & Instructional Media Producer. He regularly leads audio and podcasting workshops, and has helped others start podcasts of their own.

He is also a long-time volunteer at UBC’s CiTR 101.9fm, where he hosts Duncan’s Donuts, a weekly music show.

Attending to sound opens up myriad potentialities. While historically silence has been wielded as an instrument of oppression, and listening practices have served to categorize acoustic expressions into hierarchical binaries—sound/noise, melody/racket, speech/babel, human voice/animal howl—recent scholars, practitioners and ordinary people have become attuned to the ways in which sound and listening may prove a potent source of empowerment, resistance and care. This series attends to the decolonizing and disruptive potential of sound in its many manifestations. Through a speaker series with some of the most dynamic thinkers in humanistic sound studies, as well as reading groups and a capstone symposium, participants are invited to note the entanglement of sound, silence and power in our everyday lives, politics and dwelling.

Join us for invited speakers exploring the potentialities of sound from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, including Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, More-than-Human Geographies, Transpacific Studies, Decolonial Studies and Disability Studies. 

Series Conveners: Tamara Mitchell, French, Hispanic and Italian Studies; and Rosanne Sia, Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice