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What do cultural histories of listening tell us about the value we have ascribed to music at various points in time? And how have the invention of media from the musical score to the MP3 altered how we conceive of music as sound? “Sound Studies” is not a course in which we learn about the acoustic properties of noises or pitches (however interesting such matters may be) but rather a historical course, in which we consider how we can enrich our histories of music when we situate music within broader histories of sound. Our seminars, for instance, consider historical moments when we have listened to sound for truth (as when confessions were first recorded) or other forms of concrete information (as when sound was first communicated across phone lines) and examines how these practices did—and sometimes did not—shape ideas about how we should compose, circulate and consume music. Our case studies will be drawn from the medieval era to the current day.