Eardrums

“Eardrums is an excellent example of how media studies and literary studies can be fruitfully and insightfully combined. Whitney brings scientific studies and literary representations of scenes of listening from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into resonance with each other in original and creative ways.” —Sean Franzel, author of Connected by the Ear: The Media, Pedagogy, and Politics of the Romantic Lecture

"Eardrums is an important, highly original book... Whitney’s study makes a compelling case for reading German literary history in conjunction with the history of modern sound technology as it permeates the urban environment and industrial warfare. This approach produces fresh, absolutely exciting readings of both well-known and less familiar works and authors, which allows for tracing an alternate, most persuasive history of the transition from Naturalism to high modernism within the German tradition." —Patrizia McBride, author of The Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar Germany

"From the poetic rhythms of the late 19th century to the sounds of the present day, this unique book encourages readers to view modern German culture from a cacophonous point of view. Valuable notes and apparatus." —E. G. Wickersham, emerita, Rosemont College, CHOICE (Reprinted with permission from CHOICE http://www.choicereviews.org, copyright by the American Library Association.)

"Scholars from many fields and interests will find much to use here. Above all, Whitney makes plain the value of sound studies as a tool to explain developments in literary studies and other disciplines." —David Imhoof, Monatshefte