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Northwestern School of Communication

Jacob Smith

(he/him)
Professor; Associate Department Chair; Director, Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries
I write and teach about the cultural history of media, with a focus on sound and the relationship between media and the environment.

Department

Radio/Television/Film

Area(s) of Expertise

Entertainment Industry, Media History, Sound Cultures
Jacob Smith

Jacob Smith is co-founder and director of the Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries, and professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film. He is the author of Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media (University of California Press 2008); Spoken Word: Postwar American Phonograph Cultures (University of California Press 2011); The Thrill Makers: Celebrity, Masculinity, and Stunt Performance (University of California Press 2012); Eco-Sonic Media (University of California Press, 2015); and two experimental audiobooks: ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene (University of Michigan Press 2019) and Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves (University of Michigan Press, 2021).

He writes and teaches about the cultural history of media, with a focus on sound and the relationship between media and the environment.

Education

  • PhD Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University

Recent Publications

  • Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves (University of Michigan Press, 2020)
  • Indian Sound Culture, Indian Sound Citizenship, co-edited with Laura Brueck and Neil Verma (University of Michigan Press, 2020)
  • "Travels with Jack: ZBS's Post-Network Radio Adventure,: Resonance, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2020.
  • ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene (University of Michigan Press, 2019)
  • Anatomy of Sound: Norman Corwin and Media Authorship, co-edited with Neil Verma (University of California Press, 2016)
  • "The chance meeting of a goose and a plover on a turntable: Chris Watson's wildlife sound recordings,: in Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, December 2016.

Recent Awards, Honors and Grants

  • Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves won the SCMS Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award, 2022.
  • Anatomy of Sound: Norman Corwin and Media Authorship won the Kraszna-Krausz Best Moving Image Book Award, 2017.
  • Spoken Word won the 2012 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in General Historical Research on Recorded Sound.

Courses

  • History of the Recording Industry
  • Musical Media
  • Media and the Environment: Meet David Lynch
  • The Art of the Soundtrack
  • Children’s Media Culture
  • Understanding Creative Industries
  • Sound Studies
  • The Videographic Essay