Alexandra Hui

Bio

For Full Curriculum Vitae

Education

• PhD, History, University of California at Los Angeles, 2008
• Dissertation: "Psychophysical Studies of Sound Sensation and the Music Culture of Germany, 1860-1910"
• M.A., History, University of California at Los Angeles, 2003
• B.A., Physics with Astronomy/Astrophysics Concentration, Pomona College, 2001

Academic Career

• 2019-2024, Co-Editor for the History of Science Society
• 2019-2021, Teaching Division Councilor, American Historical Association Executive Council
• Associate Professor of History, Mississippi State University, 2014-
• Assistant Professor of History, Mississippi State University, 2008-2014

Research Interests

My most general scholarly interest is in how new forms of listening came into being, were maintained, and possibly faded away. In particular, I ask how did shifting listening practices relate to scientific understandings of auditory perception?  How did new perceptual systems co-develop with new sonic environments? My first book explored the relationship between psychophysical studies of sound sensation and music culture in nineteenth-century Germany and Austria. My current projects examine the co-development of new listening forms and background music technology and the standardization of listening practices among field scientists in twentieth-century America.

Publications

• Selected Publications (see curriculum vitae for complete list)

      • Testing Hearing: Music, Science, and Industry, co-edited with Mara Mills and Viktoria Tkaczyk. (Oxford University Press, 2020).

      • Music, Sound and the Laboratory from 1750-1980, Osiris, 28 (2013), co-edited with Julia Kursell and Myles Jackson.

• The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910 (The MIT Press, 2012).

RECENT REFEREED ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• “‘An outrageous clatter,’ ‘pēē ä wēē,’ and Other Sounds of Acclimatization,” in Peter McMurray and Priyasha Mukhopadhyay, eds., Acoustics of Empire (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021).
• “‘Mother Nature had been digitalized’: Collecting sounds and naturalizing interior soundscapes, from 1970 to the present,” in a special issue of the Contemporary Music Review, “Opening the Doors of the Studio,” edited by João Romão, Fanny Gribenski, and Jonathan Goldman, (forthcoming 2021).
• “From ‘wuh wuh’ to ‘hoo-hoo’ and the rituals of representing bird song, 1885-1925,” in Tord Larsen, Michael Blim, Ted Porter, Kalpana Ram, and Nigel Rapport, eds., Objects and Standards: On the limitations and effects of fixing and measuring life (Carolina Academic Press, 2020).
• “Ernst Mach’s Piano and the Making of a Psychophysical Imaginarium,” in John Preston, ed., Interpreting Mach: Critical Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
• “Testing the Underwater Ear: Hearing, Standardizing, and Classifying Marine Sounds during the Cold War,” co-authored with Lino Camprubí, in Alexandra Hui, Mara Mills, and Viktoria Tkaczyk, eds., Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality. (Oxford University Press, 2020).
• “Imagining Ecologies through Sound: a historic-ecological approach to the soundscape of the Mississippi Flyway.” MUSICultures, 45, 1-2 (2018).
• “The Naturalization of Timbre: Two Case Studies,” in Emily Dolan and Alexander Rehding, eds., Oxford Handbook of Timbre (Oxford University Press, published online, May 2018).
• “First Re-Creations: Phonographs and New Cultures of Listening at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” in Christian Thorau and Hansjakob Ziemer, eds., The Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Oxford University Press, 2018).

RECENT ADDITIONAL PUBLICATIONS

• “Temporalizing Space through Sound and Movement: The Günter Tembrock protocols fox behavior,” co-authored with Sophia Gräfe, essay contribution to the Sound and Science: Digital Histories digitization project of the Epistemes of Modern Acoustics research group, at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (posted July 29, 2020).
• “My Pet Cloud: DIY cloud chambers at the dawn of the Atomic Age,” in Dolly Jorgensen and Finn Arne Jorgensen, eds., Silver Linings: Clouds in Art and Science (Museumsforlaget, 2020),
• “Mimicking the Voices of Nature: The Sounds of Hunting in Twentieth-Century America,” essay contribution to the Sound and Science: Digital Histories digitization project of the Epistemes of Modern Acoustics research group, at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (posted June 12, 2018).
• “Wissenschaftsgeschichte,” “Aufzug,” and “Labor,” contributions to Daniel Morat and Hansjakob Ziemer, eds., Handbuch Sound (J. B. Metzler, 2018).

RECENT INVITED TALKS AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

• “Huxley’s Loudspeaker: Dystopian Sounds of Control During the Cold War,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society, Utrecht, Netherlands, July 23-27, 2019.

• “Calling the Wild: The psychoacoustics and ethics of mimicry in modern duck hunting,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Seattle, Washington, March 13-17, 2019.

• Invited talk, “In the Clouds” ArtScience workshop, “My Pet Cloud: DIY cloud chambers at the dawn of the Atomic Age,” Stavanger Norway, January 24-26, 2019.

• Invited talk, Der Ohrenmensch: Radiophonic Explorations, “Dislocated Sounding Bodies: Sounds of the wild in conservation radio,” Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, November 1-3, 2018.

• Invited talk, Deutsches Museum’s “New Approaches to a Cultural History of Organology” Lecture Series, “Making Duck Calls and Calling Ducks: The science and culture of wood in everyday soundmaking in early 20th century America,” Munich, Germany, June 14, 2018.

• “An Audible House Organ: The RCA Plant Broadcasting System, Personhood, and Panoptic Listening, 1943-1945,” presented at the Productive Sounds in Everyday Spaces: Sounds at work in science, art, and industry, 1920-present, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, April 27-28, 2018. *Co-organizer of this conference.

Honors & Awards

• William E. Parrish Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award, Department of History, Mississippi State University, 2018-2019 and 2015-2016.

• Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, to conduct research at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany, Summers of 2017-2019.

• Dean’s Eminent Scholar Award, The College of Arts and Sciences, Mississippi State University. 2015-2016.

• Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant, to conduct research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, Fall, 2014 through Winter, 2015.

• Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26 of the American Psychological Association) Early Career Award, 2014.

• National Science Foundation Scholar’s Award for project titled “The Science and Technology of Threshold Sounds in Public and Private Spaces” (Award # 1256966).  Awarded through the Science, Technology and Society Program, Summer, 2013 through Spring, 2014.

• European Society for the History of the Human Sciences (ESHHS) and Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JHBS) Early Career Award, 2010.

Collaboarative Scholarship

• 2015-2017, Co-organizer of the “Testing Hearing: Art, Science, Industry” Working Group, part of the “Epistemes of Modern Acoustics” Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany.
• 2011-2015, Member of the “Cultural Logic of Facts and Figures: Objectification, Measurement, and Standardization as Social Processes” Research Group, based at the Department of Social Anthropology and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).  Funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NRC) through 2015. http://www.ntnu.edu/sosant/cuff
• 2009-2015, Member of the interdisciplinary and international Berlin Wissenschaftliches Netzwerk “Hör-Wissen im Wandel: Zur Wissensgeschichte des Hörens in der Moderne” based at the Freie Universität.  Funded by the German Research Council (DFG) through 2015. http://www.hoer-wissen-im-wandel.de/
• 2013-present, Associate Series Editor, Nexus: New Histories of Science, Technology, Environment, Agriculture, and Medicine, University of Alabama Press.
• 2011-present, Core Faculty of the Center for the History of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment in the South (CHASES) at Mississippi State University. http://www.chases.msstate.edu/

Courses Taught

Early Western World (HI 1213); Modern Western World (HI 1223); History of the Holocaust (HI 3773); History of Science and Technology (HI 4653); History of Modern Germany (HI 4763); Readings in European History, 1789-1914 (HI 8523); Graduate Colloquium on Late Modern Europe (HI 8803); Graduate Colloquium on the History of the Holocaust (HI 8803); Graduate Colloquium on the History of Modern Environmental Science (HI 8803); Graduate Seminar in European History after 1789 (HI 8863); Graduate Seminar in History of Science and Technology (HI 8873); Graduate Historiography (HI 8923)