The Sonic Gaze

T Storm Heter is professor of philosophy at East Stroudsburg University, where he is also director of the Frederick Douglass Institute for Intercultural Studies, and co-director of the Race Relations Program. He is the former president of the Sartre Society and the editor the Sartre Studies International journal. He co-edits, with LaRose T. Parris and Devin Zane Shaw, the 'Living Existentialism' book series. He is a jazz musician and enthusiast and teaches a range of music and philosophy courses, including Philosophy and Hip Hop.

This book argues that whiteness is not only a visual orientation; it is a way of hearing. Inspired by the understandings of race and whiteness in the existential writings of Fanon, Beauvoir, Sartre, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis, this book introduces students to the notion of the white sonic gaze.

Introduction: Jazz PedagogyChapter One: Sonic OrientationsHearing Race Through Closed EarsWhiteness is a Sonic OrientationExistential Phenomenology Visualism Studying SoundThe Sonic GazeCreolizing ListeningA Woman SpeaksChapter Two: The Jazz Problem: Patterns of White Bad-FaithHow Does It Feel To Be a White Sonic Problem?White Minstrel ListeningWhite Savior ListeningWhite Hipster ListeningWhite Revivalist ListeningWhite Colorblind ListeningUpgraded White Colorblind ListeningEcstatic Listening White Existentialism and The White ProblemListening Exercises for Chapter 2: The Jazz Problem: Patterns of White Bad Faith ListeningChapter Three: Listening to Difference: Creole Critiques of White ListeningThe Creolizing Phenomenology of Sidney BechetWhite Revivalist Listening: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Discovery Plantation Listening: Geography and GenderListening in the Big HouseWhite Women's Listening The Creolizing Jazz of Edward "Kid" OryJazz is a Verb: The Original Creole Band Francophone Newspapers in New OrleansThe Creolizing Listening of Édouard GlissantListening Exercises for Chapter 3: Listening to Difference: Music and Creole Phenomenology Chapter Four: The Ears of a Guilty People: Africana Critiques of White ListeningThe Sonic Gaze in Black Existential ThoughtW. E. B. Du Bois Frantz Fanon Black Existential Feminist Critiques of White Listeningbell hooksHarlem Renaissance Critiques of White ListeningAlain Locke Zora Neale HurstonAlice Dunbar-NelsonSalem Tutt Whitney: A Voice from Black VaudevilleListening List to Accompany Ch. 4: The Ears of a Guilty People: Africana Critiques of White ListeningAfterword: Say Their Names