This event has been postponed. It will not be taking place on January 17. Please refer back to this page for updates about rescheduling.
This half-day symposium at UCLA will explore the intersection of sound and hate, focusing on how auditory experiences can propagate, resist, and reflect social animosities. Through discussions and lectures, the event will present unique perspectives on various forms of hate from the lens of sound studies, drawing on diverse fields to examine a wide range of social animosities. The symposium aims to deepen the understanding of how sound influences, challenges, and shapes the dynamics of hate in society.
Livestream: https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/school-of-music-live-streams/#lani-hall
Our keynote speaker is Shayna M. Silverstein, who is associate professor in the Department of Performance Studies and faculty member of the Middle Eastern and North African Studies program at Northwestern University. Silverstein’s teaching and scholarship broadly examine the politics and aesthetics of sound, movement, and performance in contemporary Middle Eastern cultural production. Her first book, Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria (2024), shows how dabke dance music embodies the fraught dynamics of gender, class, ethnicity, and nationhood in an authoritarian state. Silverstein has also published an award-winning article in the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, and an audiography in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image, among other scholarly contributions. Her publications and research have been supported by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Program, as well as the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. Shayna received her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago and her B.A. in History from Yale University.
This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate.