Symposium of Sound
Durham University
3rd-4th September 2018

Keynote speakers and performers:

  • Professor Helen Abbott, Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham
  • Dr Edward Allen, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge
  • Aurélia Lassaque, bilingual poet and singer in French and Occitan

The Symposium of Sound is a two-day conference supported by Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership. We invite abstracts for papers of twenty minutes in length on the theme of ‘sound’: its creation, imitation, and its relationship with language. Proposals may range across fields of study, with interdisciplinary approaches particularly welcome in areas such as literature, music, performance and creative practice, modern languages, and linguistics. Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Utterance, verbal and non-verbal
  • Metre, rhythm, and rhyme
  • Timbre and voicing
  • Pitch and tone
  • Echo and imitation
  • Song and lyric in performance and on the page
  • Phonetics and phonology
  • Soundscapes and sounds in place
  • Orality and aurality
  • Dialect and vernacularity
  • Gossip, rumour and bruit
  • Noise
  • Sound media (including radio and film)
  • Repetition
  • Silence and the absence of sound

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words and a short biography to symposiumofsound2018@gmail.com by 14th June 2018.

You can find further information on our conference website.

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