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Chapter 4 - Stereophonic Boundaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2025

Aaron Nyerges
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Summary

Chapter 4 explores how the literary collection adapted to audio recording to form a species of sonic cartography. I argue that Zora Neale Hurston’s fieldwork in Jamaica and Haiti presented US borders in stereo, both offset from Caribbean islands and overlapping with them. Hurston’s notion of a sonic boundary is distinct from that heard by Jean Toomer, for whom folksong is a spiritual rejoinder to the violence of agricultural labor. Toomer’s swansong to Georgia’s small-town sugarcane harvest is echoed and distorted by Cuban soundscapes. Poems about cane harvest by Agustin Acosta and Nicolás Guillén document of Cuba’s rather different agricultural identity and pose toward US imperium. In these cartographies, I argue, the line demarcating continental nation from island colony is not just aquatic, but also sonic: heard in stereo, and often out of phase.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Stereophonic Boundaries
  • Aaron Nyerges, University of Sydney
  • Book: American Modernism and the Cartographic Imagination
  • Online publication: 09 October 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009515320.005
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  • Stereophonic Boundaries
  • Aaron Nyerges, University of Sydney
  • Book: American Modernism and the Cartographic Imagination
  • Online publication: 09 October 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009515320.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Stereophonic Boundaries
  • Aaron Nyerges, University of Sydney
  • Book: American Modernism and the Cartographic Imagination
  • Online publication: 09 October 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009515320.005
Available formats
×