#  ANTHRO 1831 - The Voice 

 





 Semester:   Fall 

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 Link: [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-226246/2025/fall/17140) 

 

 

 

Prof. Nicholas Harkness

T 12-2:45pm

What is the voice? Where is the voice? Whose voice is it? This course is an exploration of the way different scholarly disciplines, thought traditions, and cultural systems have oriented to the human voice. We will consider the voice as, among other things, an object, a medium, a concept, a metaphor, and a philosophical problem. The voice will take us to the linguistics of speech, the aesthetics of song and musical composition, the anatomy and evolution of the human throat, the stylistics and narrative of literature and storytelling, technologies of speech recognition and artificial production, the structures of political participation and activism, the rituals of spiritual contact and possession, the expressive dimensions of social identity, the interior dimensions of selfhood, and the circulating media of global social life. Seminar meetings will consist of a combination of lecture, class discussion, student presentations, and media analysis. No special background is required—only a willingness to read widely across scholarly paradigms, listen very carefully, and engage with the full complexity of the topic.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Undergraduate ](/course-area/departmental-courses-primarily-undergraduate-students)
- [ Social Anthropology ](/course-area/social-anthropology)
- [ 2025 ](/course-year/2025)
- [ Fall ](/season/fall)