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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font size=4><b>Emily Thompson
(Visiting Scholar in STS 2003-2004; Senior Fellow, Dibner Institute
2002-2003) was one of the 25 MacArthur Fellows Announced by the MacArthur
Foundation Today<br><br>
Emily Thompson<br>
</b></font>Aural Historian<br>
Associate Professor of History<br>
University of California / San Diego<br>
San Diego, California<br>
Age: 43 <br><br>
<img src="cid:5.2.1.1.2.20050920122541.01e96e18@po9.mit.edu.1" width=108 height=154 alt="5b381c.jpg">Emily
Thompson is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on the
often-overlooked subject of sound and fills an important gap in
contemporary American history, reaching into domains as diverse as urban
design and cinema studies. In her book, <i>The Soundscape of
Modernity</i>, she integrates the histories of the United States,
technology, science, sound production, and acoustics to examine the
transformation of the American soundscape from the turn of the century to
the opening of Radio City Music Hall in 1933. Thompson organizes her work
around developments in twentieth-century architecture, such as new
concert halls and new building materials, and explores innovations in the
science of acoustics, the emergence of excessive noise, and the efforts
of scientists and designers to create new spaces and a new,
"modern" sound. Her interests center around changes in acoustic
design as reflections of larger cultural and social shifts in American
life in the early 1900's; she documents the interplay between differences
in acoustic characteristics of buildings constructed during this period
and increases in the value placed at the time on technological mastery,
efficiency and control in modern life. Thompson's most recent project, on
the role of engineers, projectionists, and other industry technicians in
the transition to synchronized sound in cinema, promises to provide a
similarly penetrating analysis of another important moment in the history
of sound and technology. By charting the transformation of the elusive
and ephemeral phenomenon of sound, Thompson has recovered an important
history of our time. <br><br>
Emily Thompson received a B.S. (1984) from the Rochester Institute of
Technology and a Ph.D. (1992) from Princeton University. She has held
teaching positions at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1992-93), Iowa
State University (1994-95), and the University of Pennsylvania
(1995-2002). Thompson was also a visiting scholar (2003-04) in the
Program in Science, Technology and Society and a senior fellow (2002-03)
at the Dibner Institute for History of Science and Technology, both at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She became an associate
professor in the Department of History at the University of California,
San Diego, in 2005. </blockquote><br>
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Robert M. Metcalfe Professor of Writing<br>
Director, Program in Science, Technology, and Society<br>
President, Society for the History of Technology<br><br>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room E51-185<br>
Cambridge, MA 02139<br><br>
phone: (617) 253-4062<br>
FAX: (617) 258-8118<br>
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email: rhwill@mit.edu</body>
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