Hearing Has a History: The Turn to Sound and the Case of the Deaf Reformation Cover Image

Sluch má dějiny: obrat ke zvuku a případ hluché reformace
Hearing Has a History: The Turn to Sound and the Case of the Deaf Reformation

Author(s): Anna Kvíčalová
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Cultural history, Sociology, History of ideas, History and theory of sociology, Sociology of Religion, History of Religion
Published by: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Nakladatelství Karolinum
Keywords: sound studies; sound; reformation; calvinism

Summary/Abstract: The paper introduces sound studies as a field of interdisciplinary historical research and demonstrates how the history of sound and hearing can be explored in the historical record, using the example of the early Calvinist Reformation in Geneva. It argues that hearing difficulties were the central theme of early Calvinism that significantly shaped the character of its religious and material culture, and proposes to study the Reformation as a process of systematically creating a new culture of attentive listening. It shows that the Calvinist Reformation played an active role in constructing historical categories such as deafness as well as in defining distinctions between good and bad hearing and sound, contributing to the broadly defined history of acoustics.

  • Issue Year: 16/2024
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 47-60
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Czech
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