Joseph Klett

Joseph’s dissertation is titled The Social Life of Noise. This work concerns the social processes that produce noise over signal in different organizational contexts. He uses ethnographic studies of music education classrooms and an audio engineering firm in the United States to describe this sonic phenomenon and to understand the organizational processes that generate noise in structured settings. His research brings practice theories of sense and embodiment to the study of sound, with interpretive and qualitative methods for studying inequalities in aesthetic experience. Joseph is a Junior Fellow in the Center for Cultural Sociology.

Joseph has taught on a range of topics including an introduction to sociology, social theory, urban studies (people and places), crime & deviance, and the history of public health. More information, including a current CV can be found at josephklett.com.

Additionally, Joseph is co-authoring papers on several collaborative research projects.  These include a theoretical evaluation of practices of coercion in different liberal pedagogies, a professions view to the institution of the ‘art teacher’, and a multi-species ethnography of a human-chimpanzee painting collaboration.

Joseph’s previous research projects have included a study on meaning-making in the genre of American ‘Noise Music’, a study of the effects of digitized music consumption on reception, and the coding of non-human animals in the discourse of animal rights.