If “voice” commonly refers to both human “speech” and a writer’s “style,” how do literary artists, cultural critics, theorists, and philosophers engage with these simultaneously overlapping and divergent concepts of “voice”? What does it mean to “find your voice,” to “have a voice,” or to “lose your voice”? What is “noise,” who decides, and what are the stakes of making this determination? This seminar will encourage its members to consider how speaking and writing—and their complementary concepts listening and reading—mutually inform one another in various literary, artistic, and cultural contexts. We will furthermore explore and experiment with our own practice of “voice,” and will consider the acoustic ecology of the Davidson campus and community.
“We’ll all meet on the tongue. We’ll all meet in the tongue. Pickaxe plosive bloat and say: b is for by the mouth’s slight erosions.”
– Jordan Scott, blert.
