Svenja Guhr: “Who Makes Noise in Fiction?” (Digital Humanities Kolloquium)
| Lecturer(s) | Svenja Guhr |
| Contact person | Luise Borek |
| luise.borek@germanistik.uni-freiburg.de | |
| Date | Tuesday, 19th May 2026, 18:15 - 19:45 |
| Location | Platz der Universität 3 79098 Freiburg im Breisgau Germany |
Who Makes Noise in Fiction? A Computational Approach to Character and Ambient Sound in Literature
Svenja Guhr (Berkeley)
This talk presents a computational sound analysis of the /Men Made in America/ series, examining how character and ambient sound events and their variations in loudness are distributed across the novels. Combining scene segmentation with detailed sound annotation, the study identifies moments of extreme quiet, heightened loudness, and dynamic shifts in acoustic intensity across the stories.
The findings show that sound functions as a measurable textual feature and a useful indicator of narratologically significant passages such as accelerated plot development and emotionally charged scenes. Rather than treating sound as incidental description, the talk argues that auditory cues and loudness representation are important elements of narrative construction that shape how literary worlds are structured and experienced.
More information + Zoom link here.