Publications and Research

Select Publications

A red dot indicates an item that you can read (or hear) in full by following the link provided.

• "Trilled Rs and the Dawn of Recorded Sound in America," Prototype (December 2011).
• "'A Compass of Extraordinary Range': The Forgotten Origins of Phonomanipulation," ARSC Journal 42:2 (Fall 2011): 163-203.
• "The Phonographic Funeral of Baby Burr,"The Antique Phonograph 29:4 (December 2011), 7-12.
• "'Perfectly Reproduced Slow or Fast': A New Take on Edison's First Playback of Sound," The Sound Box 29:1 (March 2011), 3-7.
• "Comments on the Desirability and Means of Bringing Pre-1972 Sound Recordings Under Federal Copyright Jurisdiction," U. S. Copyright Office (January 2011).
• "'It Could Write or Register the Sounds in a Distinct Language': The Recording Telephone of James Davis," The Sound Box 28:4 (December 2010), 12-16.
• "Les débuts de la phonographie et le son théâtral," Théâtre/Public 197 (October 2010), 32-37.
• "E. Berliners Grammophon: The Beginnings of the German Talking Machine Industry (Part 2)," coauthored with Stephan Puille, The Sound Box 28:3 (September 2010), 3-7.
• "Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville: An Annotated Discography," ARSC Journal 41:1 (Spring 2010), 43-82.
• "Reconfiguring the History of Early Cinema Through the Phonograph, 1877-1908," coauthored with Jacob Smith, Film History: An International Journal 21:4 (December 2009), 311-325.
• The Phonautographic Manuscripts of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (Bloomington, Indiana: FirstSounds.org, Dec. 2009); see also the FirstSounds.org publications page and the Phonozoic archive of First Sounds PDF publications, including obsolete versions.
• "Daguerreotyping the Voice: Léon Scott's Phonautographic Aspirations," in Parole #1: The Body of the Voice / Stimmkörper, ed. Annette Stahmer (Cologne, Germany: Salon Verlag, 2009):18-23.
• Debate '08: Taft and Bryan Campaign on the Edison Phonograph, Archeophone 1008, essay and transcriptions, released September 2008.
  
• "Speech Acoustics and the Keyboard Telephone: Rethinking Edison's Discovery of the Phonograph Principle," ARSC Journal 38:1 (Spring 2007), 10-43.
• Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s, Archeophone 1007, text coauthored with David Giovannoni, released May 2007.
• “‘Fellow Townsmen and My Noble Constituents!’: Representations of Oratory on Early Commercial Recordings,” coauthored with Richard Bauman, Oral Tradition 20:1 (2005):35-57.
• "Oratorical Footing in a New Medium: Recordings of Presidential Campaign Speeches, 1896-1912," coauthored with Richard Bauman, Texas Linguistic Forum 46 (2003): Texas Linguistic Society Proceedings.
• "Framing the Mechanical Voice: Generic Conventions of Early Sound Recording," Folklore Forum 32 (2001):57-102.

Some Recent Presentations

• "Inventing the Sound Recording: The Evolution of a New Medium, 1877-1892," National Museum of American History Tuesday Colloquium, December 6, 2011.
• "Phonogram Images on Paper, 1250-1950," Association for Recorded Sound Collections annual conference, Los Angeles, California, May 2011. [Abstract]
• "He Was the Edison Phonograph: Len Spencer, an Old New Media Pioneer," Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 13, 2011.
• "New Directions in Phonautographic History," Association for Recorded Sound Collections conference in Washington DC, May 29, 2009. Both the "script" and audio may be accessed here.
• "The Quest for the World's Oldest Recorded Sounds," Audio Engineering Society Chicago section meeting, Nov. 20, 2008.
• "From Echo To Tinfoil: The Early Phonograph in Light of Its Prehistory," Association for Recorded Sound Collections conference in Palo Alto, California, March 28, 2008. Audio of the entire conference, including my presentation, is available here.

photo: Ronda L. Sewald

Research Interests

The social and cultural history and prehistory of the phonograph, telephone, and other sound media, with a focus on reconfigurations of speech and performance and the methodical use of sound recordings themselves as texts for analysis.

Select Manuscripts / Works in Progress

• "Edison's Phonographic Voice and the Aural Culture of Imitation"
• "'Rise and Obey the Command': Performative Fidelity and the Exercise of Phonographic Power"
• "'A Compass of Extraordinary Range': The Forgotten Origins of Phonomanipulation"
• "'My Mother Was a Phonograph': The Deixis of Emergent Sound Media"
• "'Fixing Sounds': On the Nature and Antiquity of the Phonogram"
• "The Physiology of Audition and the Emergence of Modern Sound Media"

Dissertation

My dissertation, which I defended in April 2007, is entitled "The Following Record": Making Sense of Phonographic Performance, 1877-1908.  You can order a hard copy from ProQuest if you like; at over 700 pages, you'd probably come out ahead in terms of sheer raw materials!

See also a collection of media reports describing projects and publications with which I've been involved.