Mara Mills is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, where she co-directs the Center for Disability Studies. Her book On the Phone: Hearing Loss and Communication Engineering (forthcoming from Duke University Press) examines the history of speech and hearing research in the Bell System. She is currently working on the history of optical character recognition and, with Jonathan Sterne, the history of audio time stretching technology.
Projects
History of Medicine, History of Material Culture, History of Technology
Testing Hearing: Science, Art, Industry
The Construction of Deafness in Western Europe and the United States (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries)
The History of Audiometry and the Construction of the Normal Auditory Threshold
Tuning Time: Histories of Sound and Speed
Selected Publications
Sterne, Jonathan and Mara Mills (2020). “Second Rate: Tempo Regulation, Helium Speech, and ‘Information Overload.’” Triple Canopy 26. https://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/issues/26/contents/second-rate.
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Mills, Mara (2020). “Testing Hearing with Speech.” In Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality, ed. V. Tkaczyk, M. Mills, and A. E. Hui, 23–48. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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Hui, Alexandra E., Mara Mills, and Viktoria Tkaczyk (2020). “Testing Hearing: An Introduction.” In Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality, ed. V. Tkaczyk, M. Mills, and A. Hui, 1–19. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10…
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Mills, Mara and Jonathan Sterne (2020). “Aural Speed-Reading: Some Historical Bookmarks.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association 135 (2): 401–411. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2020.135.2.401.
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Past Events
Perspectives on Sound, Science, and Technology
MOREColloquium
Sampling History: A New Cut
MOREColloquium
Speed Listening by Blind Readers and the History of Audio Time Compression
MOREConference
Testing Hearing: Science, Art, Industry
MOREColloquium
Communication Engineering: Efficiency and Deficiency
MORESummer School
- Institute Event
Sound Signatures
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