Event details

The Musicology Colloquium presents a talk by Rachel Mundy (sound studies, animal music) from Rutgers University- Newark.

Abstract

Title: Canary Song and Neurogenesis: A case study in the decline of secular humanism

Fernando Nottebohm's study of singing canaries is a classic tale of neuroscience. In the early 1970s, Nottebohm asked why canaries sing a new song every year. In order to answer this question, Nottebohm embarked on a ten-year sequence of studies based on examining the birds' brains. The result was astonishing: over the course of a year, nearly 30% of a male canary’s song center appeared to die and regenerate.

The classic tale, however, is incomplete, for it is missing critical voices. These include the canaries’ songs, which were ostensibly the original subject of the study. Years later, those songs fueled Nottebohm’s regrets about his dead canaries. On closer inspection, however, his regrets are complicated by yet another missing voice, that of a young woman who was struggling to succeed in his laboratory at the time of the study. In this talk, I draw on these silenced voices to suggest that the emotional conflicts exemplified by animal laboratory science provide a compelling model for re-thinking the role of emotion and expertise in the practice we so tellingly term “secular humanism.”

Biography

Rachel Mundy is an Associate Professor of Music in the Arts, Culture, & Media program at Rutgers University in Newark. Her work is concerned with the way animal musicality has defined modern notions of life and rights for a generation of listeners shaped by ecological crisis. This is an interdisciplinary question that brings musical science into conversation with Western beliefs about race, gender, nation, and other forms of difference. In a series of nationally recognized books, articles, and public lectures, she has explored these questions through cases that connect human rights to animal voices.

Ticketing

Free, Unticketed