Stops in Szczecin, Gdańsk, and Warsaw between October 23 and October 30. More details to come soon.
Placing music in dialogue with state power and civic authority through the medium of the moving Soviet body, this roundtable foregrounds mainstream musics not often privileged in musicological studies of the Soviet Union. Whether through the deliberate censorship of “degenerate jazz” in the ‘30s or the curated presentation of “communist breakdancing” in the ‘80s, Soviet cultural authorities took special interest in controlling the bodies of the nation. Sometimes prohibited and other times encouraged, dance music was almost always regulated: the Soviet government understood how powerful the body could be as a site for an affective politics. At the same time, as evidenced through the circulation of contraband records, stilyagi, and underground nightlife, so too did ordinary individuals assert their own authority and agency through dance music. Allison Brooks-Conrad will discuss questions of ethnicity, identity, and aesthetics in Soviet-Kazakh musician Roza Rymbaeva’s disco-inspired synthpop. Gabrielle Cornish explores the late Soviet techno and breakdancing youth cultures in Moscow and Leningrad, while Kevin Karnes will look at new wave and post-punk scenes in Riga clubs. Maria Sonevytsky will speak about young musicians and efforts to discipline children’s bodies in the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Kyiv Palace of Pioneers. And lastly, Destiny Meadows will share reflections on aerobics, audiocasette circulation, and identity in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Together, we ask how dance music, often intended to cultivate joy, ecstasy, or release, offers perspectives on both state efforts to discipline the Soviet body and the everyday experience of musical affect.
University of Oregon
May 15, 2026
Research Laboratory Facilitator
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
New Orleans, LA
February 19-22, 2026
In this talk, I use the Chernobyl disaster as a starting point to set sound studies into dialogue with the “deep history” of radiation and nuclear arms testing in the twentieth century. Weaving together archival documents, oral history, and artistic examples, I argue that scientists, musicians, and government bureaucrats alike turned to sounds—not visuals—to measure and better understand the atom’s potential in the Soviet Union and United States. I position radiation as a “hyperobject” (Morton 2013): an object that is so vast and immeasurable that it defies interpretation. As something both incomprehensible in scope and invisible to the human eye, radiation intersects with audile techniques in ways that help to illuminate changing epistemologies and political ecologies during the Cold War. Ultimately, this paper asks what listening to Chernobyl can teach us about our tenuous atomic present and ever-encroaching nuclear futures.
University of Pittsburgh
February 6-7, 2026
In this talk, I use the Chernobyl disaster as a starting point to set sound and music studies into dialogue with the deep history of radiation and nuclear arms testing in the twentieth century. Weaving together archival documents, oral history, and musical examples, I show how scientists, bureaucrats, artists, and ordinary citizens alike turned to sound to measure and better understand the atom’s potential in the Soviet Union and United States. I position radiation as a “hyperobject” (Morton 2013): an object that is so vast and immeasurable that it defies interpretation. As something simultaneously both incomprehensible in scope and invisible to the human eye, radiation intersects with audile techniques in ways that help to illuminate changing epistemologies and political ecologies during the Cold War. Listening to the atom, I argue, challenged historical actors to recalibrate their understandings of science, empiricism, and geopolitics. I start with the thesis that radiation is itself an agent of sound and, moving from there, map a series of moments in nuclear and musical history in which a critical, affective ear to radiation might tell new stories about the atomic age. I ultimately want to end by asking what listening to the atom might teach us about our tenuous ecological present and ever-encroaching nuclear futures.
