Listening to Fear: Music, Emotion, and Crisis in Eurasia, 1550–1750

This interdisciplinary symposium Listening to Fear: Music, Emotion, and Crisis in Eurasia, 1550–1750 explores how fear shaped early modern Eurasian societies (1550–1750) through the lens of sound and music, with a focus on the often-overlooked lands bridging the Habsburg and Ottoman monarchies. By bringing together experts on the histories of emotions, the body, and the senses with scholars in music and sound studies, it will examine the ways that fear was used as a tool of authority, a response to crisis, and as a spiritual and embodied force. Topics to be discussed range from sonic strategies of protection in Christian or Muslim traditions to the emotional resonance of music in moments of war, plague, and migration. In doing so, this symposium aims to explore the shared human experiences that emerge when fear and sound intersect and to thereby challenge entrenched narratives of division.