Seth Mulliken

Seth Mulliken is a writer and scholar investigating the intersection of sound, media, and race. He’s particularly interested the ways that the cultural practices of sound, that is, what people do, say, think and act with sound, engage with media technologies of sound, and how these practices and technologies can serve to reinforce what he calls the “ambience of white supremacy.”

He earned his Ph.D. from NC State University in Raleigh, NC, in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. His journey to studying race, sound, media began with his BA in filmmaking from Antioch College and MFA from Temple University in Film and Media Arts. Living in Philadelphia during his Masters study, he became involved in activism and organizing, specifically in anti-racism and confronting white supremacy. While teaching media production at Villanova University, he found more and more his activist work and interest in sound threaded together, which drew him to decide to pursue an Ph.D. to address the questions of how white supremacy is reinforced through sound.

His current project involves a series of videos from the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the US Capitol. By listening to the overlap between the cultural practices of sound, the use of sound technologies, and the resonances of whiteness, amongst the insurrectionists, we can hear the ambience of white supremacy as threaded through every action and chant of the crowd.