Invited Lectures

“Autorschaft und Weltschöpfung in Herders Volksliedersammlung,”  Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Department of Germanistik, June 30 2023.

“Who Sounds most worthy of Human Rights? Aural Cultural Diversity, the Concept of Humanity, and their Religious Investments,” Durham University, September 2022.

“‘Black Pneuma’ and ‘World Breath’: Respiratory Difference and Belonging,” Airy Encounters: Respiratory Philosophy and Sound Arts,” Institute for Philosophical Studies, Science and Research Centre Koper, Slovenia Sibelius Academy, and Uniarts Helsinki, Finland, June 2022.

“Canonizing the Erasure of Voices of Difference in ETA Hoffmann’s ‘The Golden Pot’” in co-organized “Canonical Pressures: German Literature and its Voices of Difference,” University of Toronto, May 2022.

“Listening to Voices of Difference: History, Theory, Praxis,” part of the exhibit opening and book launch of Coming to Know, Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 2022.

Guest lecture for “J.G. Herder and Friedrich Kittler on Alterity and Belonging,” Yale University’s Department of German Language and Literatures, February 2022.

“Listening to the “Sounds of Migration”: The BBC and the British Library’s “Listening Project,” “Sounds of Migration,” at Pennsylvania State University’s German Department. “Best Abstract Winner.” November 2021.

“Listening to difference: the BBC and the British Library's Listening Project,” Workshop at the Aural Diversity Network, hosted by University of Nottingham and University of Leeds, January 2021.

“Kant and Herder on Race, Culture, and the Senses,” Ohio State University’s Department of German, January 2021.

“Listening to Difference: Race, Culture, and Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment,” lecture organized by the East Asia Intellectual History Network and funded by the Program of European Studies at Seoul National University. November 2020. Online.

“Herder’s Comparative Method,” Global Archive of Comparison Conference, Oakley Humanities Center at Williams College. September 2019.

“Racialized Listening and Cultural Difference in Eighteenth Century Europe,” “Entanglements of Race, Sound, and the Archive: Coloniality and the Globalised Present,” University of Amsterdam, December 2018.

“The Lyre, and the Well-tempered Lute: Theorizing the Social and the Divine Body in the European Enlightenment,” University of Luzern, Switzerland, June 2018.

“Cultural Acoustics: Sound Studies and the Study of Culture,” Keynote lecture at International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany, June 2018.

“The Eternal Tone: Herder’s Theology Between Musicology and the Natural Sciences,” at “Betwixt and Between: Sound in the Humanities and Sciences,” organized by Max Planck Institute for History of Science, Berlin Vossius Center for History of Humanities and Sciences, University of Amsterdam. Max Planck Institute, Berlin, February 2018.

“Towards an ‘Inner Physics of the Soul’: Discovering the Ear before 1800,” Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, University of British Columbia, January 2018.

“The Rustle of Print,” “Paper Sound” Workshop, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Leipzig, Germany, July 2017.

“Tonbildung 1750-1800,” Literatur-Wissen-Medien Summer School, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, July 2017.

“Herder Hears Homer Singing,” “Soundscapes of the Ancient Greek World,” Cornell-HarvardLille Transatlantic Research Colloquium, Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Science, Nafpolio, Greece, June 2017.

“Sounding Culture from the Pulpit,” “Epistemes of Modern Acoustics” Colloquium, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany, June 2017.

“Der Ton soll bleiben und Ewigkeit und Liebe Gottes tönen!: Sounding Culture from the Pulpit” Institute for German Cultural Inquiry and the Department of German Studies Colloquium, Cornell University, May 2017.

“Sounding Culture from the Pulpit” “L’ouïe dans la pensée européenne au 18c siècle,” Centre d’Étude des Relations et Contacts Linguistiques et Littéraires, Amiens, France, March 2017.

“The Emergence of Cultural Acoustics,” Departments of French, German and Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara. February 2017.

“Terpsichore and the Emergence of a German Meter” “Multilingual Philology and National Literatures: Re-Reading Classical Texts,” Université du Luxembourg, September 2016.

“Sonic Translations: Mediating Sound into Print,” “Technical Translations: Translation Technique” Princeton-Humboldt Post-Classicism Workshop, Department of Classics, Princeton University, December 2015.

“On Prosody as an Act of Reading to Listen,” Penn-Princeton Premodern Forum, University of Pennsylvania, December 2015.

“The Acoustics of ‘Natursprache’ and ‘Muttersprache,’” Seminar on “The Rise and Fall of Monolingualism” Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Washington DC, October 2015.

“To Nobody, the Well-Known: Hamann versus his Readers” German Department Graduate Symposium, Princeton University, November 2013.

“Tuning the Ear to the Rustle of Print” in “Re-Defining the Human: Modern Media and Subjectivity”, 2013-4 European Cultural Studies Colloquium, Princeton University, October 2013.

“Style and Physiology: Herder's Training of a New Reading Subject” „Materialität von Aufklärung und Volkskultur: Bücher, Bilder, Praxen,“ Lutherstadt Wittenberg, May 2013.

“Rhythm Against Overflow: Herder and the "Meer der Gelehrsamkeit" "The Rhythm of Learning" International Graduate Student Conference of the Princeton University German Department and the Humboldt University, Princeton University, March 2013.

“Freedom in Things: The Rhetoric of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Kunst-Ding and Hegel’s Symbolic Art,” in “Sinn und Sinnlichkeit: Uses and Abuses of Aesthetics Today,” Graduate Student Conference at Cornell University, Department of German Studies, February 2011.

Panels Chaired Organized

“Sensing Migrant Romanticism,” Co-organized with Carlos Abreu Mendoza, American Comparative Literature Association’s Annual Conference, 2023.

“Unjust Philologies in the ‘Modern’ University,” Co-organized with Mathura Umachandran, American Comparative Literature Annual Conference, 2022.

Conferences, Panels, and Research Groups Co-Organized

“Beyond the Digital Turn: Artificial Intelligence, Sound Studies, and the Prospects of Technology,” Yonsei University, co-organized with the Underwood International College Dean’s Task Force, 2022. Talk given on “Introduction to Cultural Acoustics.”

“Canonical Pressures: German Literature and its Voices of Difference,” Co-organized with Willi Goetschel, University of Toronto, May 2022.

“Enlightenment for the Ears: Negotiating Identities through Acts of Listening in the Long Eighteenth Century,” Two-Part Panel Series at The International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Congress, Edinburgh, UK, July 2019. Co-organized and Chaired with Mary Helen Dupree (Georgetown University).

“Cultural Acoustics,” Brett de Bary and Cornell Society for the Humanities Interdisciplinary Mellon Writing Group; Organized and Accrued Funding. Members: Jeremy Braddock (English), Kim Haines-Eitzen (Classics and Near Eastern Studies), Sergio Ospio-Romero (Music), Roger Moseley (Music), Trevor Pinch (Science and Technology Studies), Annette Richards (Music), 2017-18.

“Herders Medienphilologie,” Co-organized with Ulrike Wagner (Bard College Berlin) and Kaspar Renner (Humboldt/Potsdam), Humboldt University, July 2017. (In German).

“Topologies of Reading,” International German Department Graduate Conference, Coorganized with Alice Christensen, Princeton University. March 2012.

Talks at Annual Conferences

“German Cosmopolitanisms: A Paradox or a Productive Point of Tension?” for panel on “Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in the long Eighteenth Century” at The International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Congress, Rome, July 2023.

“Colonial Philology,” for seminar “Sensing Migrant Romanticism,” at the Annual Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association, Chicago, IL, March 2023.

“Knowledge-Making and the Disciplining of the Scholarly Body,” for panel “Unjust Philologies in the Modern University,” at the Annual Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association (hosted by Nation Taiwan Normal University, held online), June 2022.

Roundtable on “Theory Beyond English,” organized by the Literary and Cultural Theory Forum at the Modern Language Association Conference, January 2022.

“The Ode as Exemplum and its Cultural Politics,” for seminar “Poetry’s Exemplarity,” at the American Comparative Literature Association, Chicago, IL, April 2021.

Roundtable Participant, “Decolonizing the Goethezeit,” Modern Languages Association Conference, Seattle, WA, January 2020.

“Aurality, Colonial Travel Narratives, and the Enlightenment Concepts of ‘Culture’ and ‘Race,’ in “Enlightenment for the Ears” panel, at The International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Congress, Edinburgh, UK, July 2019.

“German Philhellenism and Practices of Reading and Listening in Antiquity,” in “Greek Literature and Media Theory” panel, Congress of the Fédération international des associations d’études classiques and the Classical Association Conference, University College London, July 2019.

“Between the Local, Cosmopolitan, and the Digital: The Case of the Jaipur Literature Festival,” at “Culture Industries in Asia into the Digital Age,” Situations International Conference, University of Hong Kong, November 2018.

“Measured Listening,” “Taking Measure” Panel, Modern Languages Association Annual Convention, New York, NY, January 2018.

“Anthropologies of Voice: Herder and Rousseau on the Tones of the ‘Primitives,’” “Reorientations around Goethe,” Atkins Conference of the North American German Society, State College, PA, November 2017.

“‘The Cloud of Her Cries’: Medea’s Voice and the Hermeneutics of Listening,” “Tragedy Today” Seminar, Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, October 2017.

“Moments of Cultural Conversion: Herder’s Acoustic Reading of Homer, Jakob Balde and Oliver Goldsmith,” “Herder and the Arts,” International Herder Society Conference, Universität Kassel, Germany, October 2016.

“Reading and Voicing: Orality as Technology of Erudition” in “Herder’s Interdisciplinarity: Music and the Visual Arts," International Herder Society Panel, Annual Conference of the German Studies Association. Denver, Colorado, October 2013.

“Between Constant Becoming and Absolute Fixity: Goethe as Bibliographic Nomad,” in “Stilstellung und Dynamisierung,” The International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Congress in Graz, Austria, July 2011.

“The Place of Music in the Origin of Language and the Division of the Arts: Herder, Condillac and Rousseau,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, BC, 2011.

“Veiled Beauty: Living Pictures in Goethe’s Elective Affinities,” in “Goethe and the Visual Arts,” Goethe Society of America Panel, American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Conference, Richmond, 2009.