Sounds play in our educational world all the time. Pausing to notice, to listen, to respond: That’s what doesn’t always happen. But not in Boostlit, an undergraduate class that engages sound directly in its assignments. This course challenges familiar approaches to practicing composing by emphasizing the study of creative genres--like film or literature or music--and asking students to keep a creative focus while developing their own projects. Here, the boundaries between creator and consumer breakdown. Here, we learn by making, composing for the speakers and the screen.

This article reports on the activities of the Boostlit class. We examine our assignments, reflect on our projects, and draw conclusions about education, creative work, and composing. Our primary means of scholarship are Web reflections and screen recordings of audio and mixed audio-video projects.

To get a sense of this work, you might start with highlights. You can also see in-depth collections and reflections in portfolios. Our you can explore some of the selected projects: audio essays, e-poems, and video essays.

Our work explores relationships between the sonic and the visual. We will consider ways that sound and its attendant feelings open new opportunities for composing and responding, especially for ways of challenging familiar modes of academic composition. We also explore the affordances and limits of sonic and visual approaches, considering examples when the sonic comes to the fore, as well as what happens when we bring the sonic and visual together.