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When we read, what do we hear and why? On Thursday, April 20, join Professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia for a virtual Foster-Scholz Club talk titled “Audiation: Listening to Writing” to answer these questions.At this talk, Associate Professor of English & Humanities Lucía Martínez Valdivia will discuss her current research into the different ways that texts can prompt the audiation—or mind’s ear—of their readers, in some cases exceeding the possibilities of heard sound. From seemingly straightforward features of language like onomatopoeia to less obvious phenomena like subvocalization, the use of white space, and the description of impossible-to-realize sound, this talk will model how we might become aware of and learn to produce new experiences of sound in the mind.

About Lucía Martínez Valdivia, associate professor of English & humanities
Lucía Martínez Valdivia is associate professor of English & humanities at Reed College. She teaches classes on poetry, poetics, aesthetics, and the phenomenology of reading. Her research specializes in histories of poetic forms, and she has written a number of articles on early modern English poetry and prosody, with a particular focus on short-form lines and the interplay of poetic meter, music, and religion. Her current project explores the relationship between the reading of poetry and sound.

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