Busy cafeterias, hushed auditoriums, quiet libraries—learning spaces have familiar soundscapes, but how often do we notice the noise, or lack of it?
Join University of Michigan’s Jon M. Wargo for the spring 2024 School of Education Ganders Lecture as he uses case studies to explore sound as a material and a design resource for learning and to explore the cultural politics of noise.
“Noticing Noise, Noisy Noticings: Sound as the Content and Context for Learning” will take place on March 27 from 6 to 8 p.m. in Watson Hall 036. The event is free; Communication Access Real-Time Translation (CART) will be provided.
Jon Wargo is associate professor of educational studies at the University of Michigan’s Marsal Family School of Education. Building on a decade of fieldwork, his scholarship addresses the role of media and technology as it intersects with literacy learning, examines how ingenuity is interpreted in schools and classrooms and leverages young peoples’ differences as a way to understand human sense-making.
Fueled by his experiences as a queer, multi-ethnic, first-generation college graduate and elementary educator, teaching in urban multilingual schools, Wargo’s work is informed by longstanding commitments to educational equity, racial justice, the arts and community activism.
Jon Wargo
“Jon Wargo’s interdisciplinary work and innovative methods engages sound in the context of learning, social interaction and play, and the phenomenology of navigating inequality and silencing,” says Professor Beth Ferri, SOE associate dean for research.
In this lecture, Wargo will address the material and political aspects of sound with observations of queer youth navigating the sounds and silences of homophobia, the noise of embodied learning in a Pre-K STEAM unit, and the social interactions of undergraduates engaged in an immersive escape room game.
The Harry S. and Elva K. Ganders Memorial Lecture Series remembers Harry S. Ganders, the School of Education’s fourth dean (who oversaw the transformation of the Teachers College into the “All University” School of Education) and his wife. The lecture was established by the Ganders’ daughters and is also supported by alumni and other contributions to the Harry S. and Elva K. Ganders Memorial Fund.
The lecture is co-sponsored by the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Kappa Delta Pi (Alpha Delta Iota Chapter), School of Architecture and Syracuse University Humanities Center.
