Recommendations

Although some books are best suited for instructors to use in the classroom, other books, like Sounding Composition, are valuable to anyone who is surrounded daily by auditory sounds and manipulative practices by others trying to sell them products or influence their thoughts.  It may sound a bit Orwellian, but it is important to understand that other people have already recognized the influential nature of sound, and are using this understanding to persuade, and without understanding how to “listen” to what is presented, a person is less equipped to guard against being manipulated. Ceraso includes activities that instructors can bring into a classroom to help reeducate students about sound and listening, but anyone who wants a better understanding about the impact and nature of sound and listening can benefit from Sounding Composition.  Ceraso’s experience as an educator of digital writing and rhetoric with a concentration in composition, literacy, pedagogy, and rhetoric is evident in the book as she walks readers step-by-step through the interdisciplinary nature of the sonic world.   She emphasizes that multimodal listening pedagogy gives students a way to incorporate sonic practices that they can use to find, as she cites John Dewey, “experiences of a deeper and more expansive quality” (p. 154).  Her extensive research in multimodal composition, sound studies, and sensory rhetoric also allow for an interesting and compelling argument for the importance of interdisciplinary multimodal composition pedagogy, especially in a college classroom where students are preparing for an entrance into “real” life.  Ceraso explains that “sonic experiences engage much more than our ears and brains; they also affect our physical and emotional states. Indeed, all sonic encounters have subtle, sometimes powerful, effects on our bodily experiences in different situations and settings” (p. 2).  Now is a ripe opportunity to expand pedagogy in rhetoric and composition to invoke, reinvent, and relook at sound and listening practices and attitudes, and sonic composing and receiving opportunities.  After interactively engaging with Sounding Composition, when flipping to the last page, readers should begin reflecting on multimodal listening and composing pedagogy, and the direction that sonic education should be headed: toward teaching students the importance and necessity of understanding how sound not only shapes experiences, and how experiences are shaped by sound, but more importantly, how one’s body, situation context and environment, and material objects are combined with sound to create a multisensory experience.