David Novak

Curriculum Vitae

My work examines transcultural relationships of media circulation, which I explore through multi-sited ethnographic research. My interests include remediation, sonic intersubjectivity, social practices of listening, and the creative politics of music technology. My current book project, Diggers: A Counterhistory of Global Popular Music, theorizes musical globalization through contemporary histories of digital and analog sound media, particularly among networks of record and cassette collectors, informal sound archives, reissue labels and sound recording digitization projects in Southeast Asia.

Director, Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music

Affiliate, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies

Affiliate, Anthropology

Affiliate, Film and Media Studies

Related links to David Novak's research:

• Interview: 'Red Bull Music Academy: David Novak on Noise, Fukushima, and More'
• Interview: 'New Books in East Asian Studies' with David Novak
• Interview: Books and Ideas on Japanoise: Affect at the Edge of Music
• Interview: New Books Network: David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny on “Keywords in Sound” 
• Interview: Duke University Franklin Humanities Institute
• Podcast: Rock is Lit Interview
• Podcast: MIT, 'The Cultural Feedback of Noise'
• Podcast: MoMA post, 'The Sounds of Japan's Antinuclear Movement'
• Podcasts @ Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music (CISM)
• Cool Courses: Independent Music in America (UCSB HFA)

Publications

Books

• 2015   Keywords in Sound. Co-edited with Matthew Sakakeeny. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

• 2013   Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Winner of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Prize. Download

Selected Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

• 2020  “Feedback, Modularity and the Global Subjects of Electronic Soundmaking.” Echo: A Journal of Music, Thought, and Technology v.3. 
• 2019  “The Arts of Gentrification: Creativity, Cultural Policy and Public Space in Kamagasaki.” City & Society 31(1):91-118.
• 2017  "Project Fukushima! Performativity and the Politics of Festival in Post-3.11 Japan." Anthropological Quarterly 89(4):227-255.
• 2014  “A Beautiful Noise Emerging from the Apparatus of an Obstacle: Trains and the Sound of the Japanese City.” In The Acoustic City, Matthew Gandy and Benny Nilsen, eds. Berlin: Jovis.
• 2013   “Osaka Inside Out." Field recording mix and notes. Sensory Studies, October 2013.
• 2013   “The Sounds of Japan’s Antinuclear Movement.” Podcast and multimedia publication. post: Notes on Modern and Contemporary Art around the Globe. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). David Plath Media Award (Honorable Mention), Society for East Asian Anthropology, American Anthropological Association.
• 2011   “The Sublime Frequencies of New Old Media.” Public Culture 23(3): 601-634. See also online media supplement. Jaap Kunst Prize (Honorable Mention), Society for Ethnomusicology.
• 2010   “Listening to Kamagasaki.” Anthropology News 51(9): 5.
• 2010   “Onkyô/Oto, Chinmoku/Ma, to Impuro no Sendaitekina Kachi” [“Sound(s), Silence(s), and the Global Value of Improvisation”]. In Nyû Jazu Sutadizu [The New Jazz Studies], ed. T. Miyawaki, S. Hosokawa and M.S. Molasky, pp. 375-395. Tokyo: Artes.
• 2010    “Cosmopolitanism, Remediation and the Ghost World of Bollywood.” Cultural Anthropology 25(1): 40-72. Also see online media supplement.
• 2010    “Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyô.” Asian Music 41(1): 36-59.
• 2008    “2.5 by 6 Metres of Space: Japanese Music Coffeehouses and Experimental Practices of Listening.” Popular Music 27(1): 15-34. Winner of Richard Waterman Prize, Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Courses

• Anthropology of Music

• Music as Media

• Sound Studies

• Ethnographic Writing

• Globalization and Popular Music

• Music and Documentary Film

• Independent Music 

• History and Practice of the Recording Studio

• Music in Modern Japan

• Global Screens, Global Sounds

• Music Cultures of Java and Bali

• Ethnomusicology Forum

• Dissertation Writing Workshop