Beardsley, Amanda (Author)
McDonough, Thomas R. (Advisor)
Smart, Pamela G. (Advisor)
This dissertation describes the relationship between innovations in sonic technologies and religious faith. Specifically, I address experimental efforts of Mormons to develop technologies that would more purely convey celestial messages. Chapter One considers the Urim and Thummim, an ancient biblical device that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, claims enabled him to faithfully reproduce the word of God. Smith lays a foundation upon which subsequent attempts to directly relay sacred doctrine were built, including the Salt Lake Tabernacle, a space of gathering to hear revelation and doctrine through sermons and music. Chapter Two looks at stereophonic sound, developed by Mormon physicist Harvey Fletcher in the 1920s, with reference to the Tabernacle. Stereophonic reproductions were meant to achieve the affective experience of having been in the presence of the source, in whatever context it was received. Fletcher drew inspiration from the Tabernacle insofar as its acoustic design sought for its congregants a pure aural experience. The last chapter addresses an unorthodox study on miniskirts conducted by Fletcher’s student, Vern Knudsen, in 1969. Knudsen tested the sound absorption levels of several women dressed in miniskirts to prove that they “would disturb the balance of sound designed into the auditorium.” According to Knudsen, the study was inspired by an occurrence in the Mormon Tabernacle in 1875, when Brigham Young asked women to bring extra overcoats and skirts to help dampen unwieldy or rampant echoes so congregations could better hear his sermons. Finding that this abbreviated clothing functioned poorly acoustically, women were thus readily characterized as the source of aberration, consistent with a pervasive understanding that women and their bodies were antithetical to pure communication. These case studies demonstrate that Mormonism has played a critical role in the development of sound technologies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in its use and elaboration of media technologies to transmit sacred information. Among the contributions this project makes to sound histories is its insistence on the inextricable enmeshment of technology and faith, and in so doing it sheds light on how a new religion was able to gain traction in a moment largely dominated by secular narratives.
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Book
Godfrey, Matthew C.;
Jedediah S. Rogers;
(2019)
The earth will appear as the Garden of Eden: essays on Mormon environmental history
(/isis/citation/CBB551746467/)
Article
Amanda Beardsley;
(July 2021)
The Female Absorption Coefficient: The Miniskirt Study, Gender, and Latter-day Saint Architectural Acoustics
(/isis/citation/CBB046448549/)
Article
Angela R. Bielefeldt;
Nathan E. Canney;
(2016)
Relationships Between Religion, Spirituality, and Socially Responsible Engineering
(/isis/citation/CBB907977542/)
Chapter
Boyer, Paul S.;
(2012)
God, the Bomb, and the Cold War: The Religious and Ethical Debate over Nuclear Weapons, 1945--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001212730/)
Book
Chad Parker;
(2015)
Making the Desert Modern: Americans, Arabs, and Oil on the Saudi Frontier, 1933-1973
(/isis/citation/CBB523735271/)
Article
Walker, Paul;
(2014)
Of Gardens and Prosperity
(/isis/citation/CBB001201775/)
Book
Sterne, Jonathan;
(2003)
The audible past: Cultural origins of sound reproduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001180121/)
Article
Owen Marshall;
(July 2021)
The Maniac-Making Machine: A Media History of Delayed Auditory Feedback
(/isis/citation/CBB118537584/)
Book
Kenney, William Howland;
(1999)
Recorded music in American life: The phonograph and popular memory, 1890--1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001181270/)
Book
Millard, A. J.;
(1995)
America on record: A history of recorded sound
(/isis/citation/CBB001180107/)
Chapter
Horning, Susan Schmidt;
(2004)
Recording: The search for sound
(/isis/citation/CBB001180134/)
Thesis
Luke Stadel;
(2015)
Television as a Sound Medium, 1922-1994
(/isis/citation/CBB291048813/)
Article
Vaillant, Derek;
(2003)
Peddling noise: Contesting the civic soundscape of Chicago, 1980--1913
(/isis/citation/CBB001181394/)
Article
Horning, Susan Schmidt;
(2000)
Chasing sound: The culture and technology of recording studios in postwar America
(/isis/citation/CBB001180132/)
Article
Siefert, Marsha;
(1995)
Image/Music/Voice: Song dubbing in Hollywood musicals
(/isis/citation/CBB001181366/)
Article
Bijsterveld, Karin;
(2010)
Acoustic cocooning: How the car became a place to unwind
(/isis/citation/CBB001181094/)
Chapter
Peters, J.;
(2004)
Helmholtz, Edison and sound history
(/isis/citation/CBB001180111/)
Book
Keeling, Kara;
Kun, Josh;
(2012)
Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies
(/isis/citation/CBB001421306/)
Book
Taylor, Timothy Dean;
(2012)
The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001181385/)
Article
Vito Francesco Polcaro;
Andrea Orlando;
Emmanuele Curti;
Alberto Scuderi;
Leonardo Lo Zito;
(2018)
A New Hierophany at Monte Croccia (Basilicata)
(/isis/citation/CBB059135874/)
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