Jennifer Lynn Stoever

Associate Professor

Department of English

Mentoring Statement

Stoever’s mentoring philosophy is hands-on, collaborative, and involves structured and scaffolded participation in the field early on.

Background

Jennifer Lynn Stoever’s research examines the intersections of sound, race, gender, and representation in American culture. Her book The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016) argues that the structures of American racism depend heavily on auditory markers—such as vocal tone, accent, and volume—rather than just visual traits. By holding sound studies accountable to critical race theory, The Sonic Color Line has influenced media studies, sociology, and musicology among other fields. Stoever’s book served as the foundation for the "Stand For Sonic Diversity" pledge, a 2020 equity initiative supported by Pandora and SiriusXM that commits to hiring voices of color for at least 50% of all on-air advertising.

A central tenet of Stoever’s research is how listening itself functions as a site of immense structural and political power rather than as a neutral sensory act. While dominant groups use listening as a tool for social regulation, surveillance, and enforcement, oppressed communities can reclaim it as a potent form of political agency, resistance, and care. This exploration of auditory agency anchors her current NEH and Howard Foundation-supported book project, Living Room Revolutions: Black and Brown Women Collecting Records, Selecting Sounds, and Making New Worlds in the 1970s Bronx and Beyond.

Stoever has also published research on race and sound in American Quarterly, Social Text, Radical History Review, and Modernist Cultures, among others. In 2009, she co-founded Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog with Liana Silva ’12 and Aaron Trammell ’09, and is the site’s editor-in-chief. Sounding Out! is the premier digital platform and academic hub for analyzing how power works through sound and listening. Visited by more than 1.2 million unique readers, the hub's research is currently taught at more than 350 colleges and universities worldwide. In 2026, NYU Press published the anthology Power in Listening: The Sounding Out! Reader that Stoever co-edited with Silva and Trammell.

Stoever is deeply involved in community-engaged public humanities research and is a founding member of the English Department’s Engaged Digital Humanities Working Group. She was the lead organizer for the 91�� Historical Soundwalk Project (2014-2018), a collaborative effort that bridged the University with local residents through public sound art. She co-directs the 91�� Punk D.I.Y. Community Archive, an ongoing project dedicated to preserving and documenting the history of the local music scene and countercultures. Recently, she partnered with Wiki Education to implement interactive classroom assignments where her students act as "history detectives" to expand, diversify, and improve English Wikipedia content. She served on Wiki Edu’s Humanities and Social Justice Advisory Committee in 2025.

Select Publications

Power in Listening: The Sounding Out! Reader, co-edited with L. Silva & A. Trammell, (New York University Press, 2026).
“Making Parking Ramps Dance: Flexibility, Reciprocity, and Community Building in the 91�� Historical Soundwalk Project,” Public Humanities: Engaging Community, Empowering Civic Discourse, and Reshaping Academia (East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2025), 237-258.
“From ‘Dead Spots’ to ‘Hot Spots’: Ann Petry’s ‘On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon,’” The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen, ed. Nathalie Aghoro, London: Bloomsbury, 2021: 164-195.
“Crate Digging Begins at Home: Black and Latinx Women Collecting and Selecting Records in the 1960s and ‘70s Bronx,” The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music, eds. Justin Burton and J.L. Oakes, Oxford, 2018: 1-20.
The Sonic Color Line: Race and Listening in America, (New York University Press, 2016).

Education

PhD and MA in American studies and ethnicity, University of Southern California
BA in English with a subject credential in secondary education in English, University of California-Riverside

Research Interests

African American literature and culture
Sound and audio culture studies
Critical ethnic studies and American studies
Civic engagement
Digital humanities

Teaching Interests

The African American novel
19^th and 20^th century Black literature
Black Women’s literature, art, and music (1960-1980)
Sound and storytelling in podcasts
Listening as a critical and cultural practice

Awards

Harpur College Faculty Research/Subvention grant (2025)
Humanities and Social Justice Advisory Committee Member, Wiki Education (2025)
George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship Award, Brown University (2024)
Oral History Association Microgrant for Community Oral Historian Meet Up (2023)
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Award (2023)
91�� Material and Visual Worlds Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence Seed Grant (2022 and 2018)
Art Bridges grant, Crystal Bridges Art Museum (2021)
Honorable Mention, Harpur College Undergraduate Teaching Award (2021)
Kaschak Institute for Women and Girls Faculty Fellowship, 91�� (2021)
Honorable Mention, Best Essay Award, Association for Theatre in Higher Education (2019)
Nominee, American Musicological Society, Best Book in Critical Race Studies (2018)
Voces Oral History Workshop Fellow, University of Texas-Austin (2018)
Andrew Whiting Foundation Public-Facing Scholarship Seed Grant (2018)
Honorable Mention, Harpur College Graduate Teaching Award (2017)
Engaged Teaching Fellow, 91�� Center for Civic Engagement (2015)
SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2014 )
Society for the Humanities Fellowship, Cornell University (2011-2012)

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