Understanding Learning Spaces Sonically, Soundscaping Evaluations of Place

We spend all our lives in spaces, whether those are digital spaces, public areas, institutional sites, or the spaces of our minds. These spaces are necessarily filled with sounds-heard, felt, imagined, or evoked. In thinking about what Purdy and DeVoss (2017) call the “infrastructures of writing,” and learning experiences of classrooms in particular, there has been an increased interest and scholarship within composition and rhetoric that focuses on built environments, learning spaces, and classroom design. However, much of this literature has yet to draw productively on sound. Most mentions of sonic dimensions of space merely suggest a signal/noise relationship, where undesirable “noise” would be minimized. In what follows I will argue that becoming attuned to sound in classroom design has far more potential than a desire to eliminate noise. In doing so, I offer the soundscapes of 7 cross-disciplinary, writing-intensive courses as a means of recovering the potential for sound in evaluating space. Finally, I argue for further work in putting the research of rhetorical soundscape studies in conversation with learning spaces and classroom design.