America" exhibit, a Hearing Place Studio Lab sponsored
installation with Christine Brodsky, Nicholas Smith, Megan
Murph, Timothy Langen, and Caleb Turnock
Sponsored by Mizzou’s Center for the Humanities, the Hearing Place Studio Lab explores how we hear and listen to place, recognizing that communication may be sensed through sound but not fully translated within a listener’s existing framework of understanding.
Hearing Place is the first project supported by the Center for the Humanities StudioLab Initiative, which aims to advance community engaged interdisciplinary humanities research and promote humanities events that are free and open to the community.
“We launched the Studiolab program to advance humanities research that enriches the lives of the Missourians that the University of Missouri proudly serves,” said Julie Elman, founding director of the Center for the Humanities. “The best way to do that is to engage directly with our communities and learn from the people who make this place feel (and sound) like home.”
Through research collaborations, sound-based performances, and installations, the Hearing Place interdisciplinary team invites participants to consider how sound is shaped through attentive, shared listening.
Fall 2025
The Missouri State Old-Time Fiddle Invitational, September 14, 2025
Ten of Missouri’s best fiddlers competed for top honors, highlighting the cultural resonance of traditional music and place.
“Prairie Alchemy: Place, Healing, and Neurodivergence,” October 3, 2025
Megan Kaminski, poet and professor of environmental studies at the University of Kansas, explored place, hearing, and neurodivergence. Kaminski read selections from her forthcoming book, modeling poetry as a way of hearing and knowing place.
“Buen Vivir: Listening To and With the Pluriverse,” October 24, 2025
Lutz Koepnick, Max Kade Foundation Chair in German Studies and a professor of cinema and media arts at Vanderbilt University, led a workshop on resonance.
Current exhibition
Coordinated by Donald Quist, assistant professor of English, in partnership with Mizzou’s Museum of Art and Archaeology, the “Impressions: Black Spirit in America” exhibition highlights how Black experiences have shaped American history and culture. The exhibition showcases a range of perspectives, drawing from the museum's permanent collection with additional loans of art from Art Bridges Foundation in Bentonville, Arkansas. In this context, hearing place becomes an act of recognizing presence, endurance, and creativity. The exhibition is on display through May 2026.
Spring 2026
Upcoming events will feature a contra dance, an American social folk dance, and a sound bath, which is a meditative experience featuring resonant sounds from instruments.
Fall 2026
The fall 2026 signature event will feature “Sun Boxes,” a solar-powered sound art installation by American sound artist Craig Colorusso. Plans also include commissioning an original composition by the Mizzou New Music Initiative.
Learn more about the Hearing Place Studio Lab.