As a species, we hear before we see. This seminar acknowledges both the visual primacy as well as phonocentric tendencies of our modern world, ponders the possibility of an "ensoniment" in conjunction with the dominant enlightenment discourse, and strives to extend the capacity that humanities — both as a species and a scholarly field — hear and understand sounds — their materiality, technologies, and philosophies. We ask the following questions: Why and how does sound become an increasingly important object of study for literary, media, cultural studies, as well as critical theory? If Jonathan Sterne is right in diagnosing heretofore an absence of a sufficient working language that describes sound, then what could our engagement with sound and its matters contribute? If Jacques Attali is right in pinpointing music as prophetic for socio-economic and cultural change, then what are the sonic prophecies of our post-revolution, anthropocenic, and post-human age? What can we gain from the philosophical teachings of sounds produced by fellow humans, nonhuman actors, sound reproduction technologies and sonic imagination? Through matched methodological and theoretical readings, we will work to develop our critical vocabulary of sound and proximate a functional sonic semiotics. Through an insistent and supple attention to sound matters and a firm belief that sound does matter, we hope to hear the prophetic messages of the sound of our world and learn to better inhibit this earth.