Associate Professor

Department Chair

BA summa cum laude, University of Minnesota (Humanities)

AM, University of Illinois (Speech Communication)

PhD, University of Illinois (Communications)

Jonathan Sterne writes about sound and music, communication technologies old and new, contemporary cultural studies, and a range of other matters. He has two forthcoming books: MP3: The Meaning of a Format considers the mp3 as an historical, cultural and political phenomenon. The Sound Studies Reader collects and comments upon classic work on sound in the human sciences.

For a full bio, publications and a mélange of other materials, visit his website at http://sterneworks.org

Courses:

see http://sterneworks.org/courses.html for current course listings.

Selected publications:

Book:

• The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Essays:

• “Enemy Voice,” Social Text #96 25:3 (September 2008): 79-100.
• “The Death and Life of Digital Audio,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 31:4 (December 2006): 338-348.
• “The MP3 as Cultural Artifact,” New Media and Society 8:5 (November 2006): 825-842.
• “C. Wright Mills, the Bureau for Applied Social Research, and Meaning of Critical Scholarship.” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 5:1 (Winter 2005): 65-94.
• “The Burden of Culture.” In The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, ed. Michael Bérubé, 80-102. Malden: Basil Blackwell, 2004.
• “Bourdieu, Technique and Technology,” Cultural Studies 17:3/4 (May/July 2003): 367-389.
• “The Internet Race Goes to Class.” In Race In Cyberspace, eds. Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert Rodman, 191-212. New York: Routledge, 2000.
• “Television Under Construction: American Television and the Problem of Distribution 1926-1962.” Media, Culture and Society 21:3 (July 1999): 503-530.
• “Sounds Like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architectonics of Commercial Space.” Ethnomusicology 41:1 (Winter 1997): 22-50.