Emily Thompson

Professor of History
Office Phone
609-258-8405
Email
[email protected]
Office
225 Dickinson Hall
Office Hours
Monday: 3:30 pm-5:30 pm

Schedule an office hours appointment.

Professor Thompson Is Transitioning to Retirement

Professor Thompson is now half-time faculty, as she moves toward full retirement beginning July 2025.

She is no longer accepting new graduate student advisees, and she is not available for manuscript or promotion reviews. All such requests at this time will be respectfully declined, thus it is suggested that you do not send them her way. Thank you.

Emily Thompson is a historian of technology who studies late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Her research explores the cultural history of sound, music, noise, and listening, and focuses on how these phenomena and activities intersect with technologies like the phonograph, motion pictures, and architecture.

Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts. In 2005, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Education

B.S. Physics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 1984
Ph.D. History, Princeton University, 1992

Current Research

Professor Thompson’s current research focuses upon the transformation of technical work during the transition from silent to sound motion pictures in the American film industry. Her book-in-progress, Sound Effects, will examine the working lives of sound engineers, editors, musicians, projectionists, and other technicians associated with the production and exhibition of films in the United States during the period 1925-1933.

Selected Publications

The Roaring 'Twenties, an interactive, multimedia website on Noise in New York City circa 1929, built in collaboration with Scott Mahoy at the University of Southern California, and then rebuilt with Ben Johnson at Princeton.

  • 2015 Citation for Best Historical Materials, American Library Association, Reference and User Services Association
  • 2014 Award for Innovative Use of Archives, Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York

"Remix Redux," Cabinet 36 (Fall 2009): 23-28.

The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (The MIT Press, 2002).

  • 2005 Edelstein Prize of the Society for the History of Technology
  • 2004 Marc-Auguste Pictet Prize of the Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle de Genève
  • 2003 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association
  • 2003 Lewis Mumford Prize of the Media Ecology Association
  • 2002 Science Writing Prize of the Acoustical Society of America
  • “Elegantly written and wonderfully engaging ... a path-breaking account of the technology, architecture and culture of acoustics in the early 20th century.” Leon Botstein, Los Angeles Times
  • “A historical tour de force ... as accessible in its technical content as it is provocative in its cultural interpretations.” Daniel Kevles, New York Review of Books
  • “What Emily Thompson achieves so impressively ... is an evocative reconstruction of American audio life in the first third of the twentieth century. ... The significance and poetry of her account steals up on you.” David Toop, Bookforum

The Architecture of Science, co-edited with Peter Galison (The MIT Press, 1999).

“Wiring the World: Theater Installation Engineers and the Empire of Sound in the Motion Picture Industry, 1927-1930, pp. 191-209 in Veit Erlmann, ed., Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity (Berg, 2004).

“Machines, Music and the Quest for Fidelity: Marketing the Edison Phonograph in America, 1877-1925,” Musical Quarterly 79 (Spring 1995): 131-171.

  • Inspired Tone Test, a chamber opera by Nicholas Brooke which held its world premiere at the Lincoln Center Festival, July 2004, New York.
  • 1996 Honorable Mention for Excellence in Recorded Sound Research, Association for Recorded Sound Collections.

Her writing has also appeared in Isis, the New York Times, American Heritage of Invention and Technology, and Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney’s Book of Lists (Vintage, 2006).

Radio and TV Features Available Online

Follow the links to an online archive of each show in a new window.

Courses

Click on a course title for most recent PDF version of syllabus.

Advisee(s):
Area of Interest
Cultural History
History of Technology
Material Culture
Media
Urban History
Home Department & Other Affiliations
History
Field(s)
History of Science
U.S. 19th Century
U.S. 20th Century
Period
19th Century
20th Century
Region
United States

Publications

The Soundscape of Modernity by Emily Thompson
The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933
The Architecture of Science Edited by Peter Galison and Emily Thompson
The Architecture of Science