David Novak
Assistant Professor
Modern Japan, Media and Technology
Music Building #1133
David Novak’s work explores the relationship between modern cultures and the circulation of musical media. His research interests include globalization of popular music, experimental culture, environmental sound, social practices of listening and intermedia. Before coming to UC Santa Barbara, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, where he was appointed in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities. Novak is the author of Japanoise: The Cultural Feedback of Global Media Circulation(Duke University Press, publication forthcoming). The book is an ethnography of Noise, an experimental electronic music, developed over several years of multi-sited fieldwork among Japanese and North American practitioners and listeners. His current research focuses on the politics of sound in urban Japan, particularly in the impact of noise regulations on homeless and migrant labor communities in South Osaka. He is the founder of the Music and Sound Interest Group in the American Anthropological Association.
Selected Publications:
2011. "The Sublime Frequencies of New Old Media." Public Culture 23(3):603-34. Supplemental Materials
2010. "Listening to Kamagasaki." Anthropology News 51(9):5.
Supplemental Materials
2010. “Cosmopolitanism, Remediation and the Ghost World of Bollywood.” Cultural Anthropology 25(1):40-72. Supplemental materials at Cultural Anthropology website.
2010. “Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyô.” Asian Music 41(1):36-59.
