T Storm Heter is professor of philosophy at East Stroudsburg University, where he is also director of the Frederick Douglass Institute for Intercultural Studies, and co-director of the Race Relations Program. He co-edits, with LaRose T. Parris and Devin Zane Shaw, the ‘Living Existentialism’ book series. He is a jazz musician and enthusiast and teaches a range of music and philosophy courses, including Philosophy and Hip Hop.

Heter is both a philosopher and a museum, and on the first page of this volume announces his main argument: people "make race with [their] ears." He theorizes critical whiteness studies to distinguish how “racialized listening orientations … form the background of experience” (p. 8). In this he joins other musician-authors who have effectively addressed this issue in other disciplines, e.g., theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander. Though still timely, the book is overdue, for Africana and Creole people know well the "white gaze" into Black music. Heter interrogates the colonial history and continuum of aural racialism. The Sonic Gaze is a bravely written and provocative text. If Heter’s critiques appear self-destructive, his voice is from within his community. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

• Introduction: Jazz PedagogyChapter One: Sonic OrientationsHearing Race Through Closed EarsWhiteness is a Sonic OrientationExistential Phenomenology Visualism Studying SoundThe Sonic GazeCreolizing ListeningA Woman SpeaksChapter Two: The Jazz Problem: Patterns of White Bad-FaithHow Does It Feel To Be a White Sonic Problem?White Minstrel ListeningWhite Savior ListeningWhite Hipster ListeningWhite Revivalist ListeningWhite Colorblind ListeningUpgraded White Colorblind ListeningEcstatic Listening White Existentialism and The White ProblemListening Exercises for Chapter 2: The Jazz Problem: Patterns of White Bad Faith ListeningChapter Three: Listening to Difference: Creole Critiques of White ListeningThe Creolizing Phenomenology of Sidney BechetWhite Revivalist Listening: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Discovery Plantation Listening: Geography and GenderListening in the Big HouseWhite Women’s Listening The Creolizing Jazz of Edward “Kid” OryJazz is a Verb: The Original Creole Band Francophone Newspapers in New OrleansThe Creolizing Listening of Édouard GlissantListening Exercises for Chapter 3: Listening to Difference: Music and Creole Phenomenology Chapter Four: The Ears of a Guilty People: Africana Critiques of White ListeningThe Sonic Gaze in Black Existential ThoughtW. E. B. Du Bois Frantz Fanon Black Existential Feminist Critiques of White Listeningbell hooksHarlem Renaissance Critiques of White ListeningAlain Locke Zora Neale HurstonAlice Dunbar-NelsonSalem Tutt Whitney: A Voice from Black VaudevilleListening List to Accompany Ch. 4: The Ears of a Guilty People: Africana Critiques of White ListeningAfterword: Say Their Names

T Storm Heter is professor of philosophy at East Stroudsburg University, where he is also director of the Frederick Douglass Institute for Intercultural Studies, and co-director of the Race Relations Program. He co-edits, with LaRose T. Parris and Devin Zane Shaw, the ‘Living Existentialism’ book series. He is a jazz musician and enthusiast and teaches a range of music and philosophy courses, including Philosophy and Hip Hop.

Heter is both a philosopher and a museum, and on the first page of this volume announces his main argument: people "make race with [their] ears." He theorizes critical whiteness studies to distinguish how “racialized listening orientations … form the background of experience” (p. 8). In this he joins other musician-authors who have effectively addressed this issue in other disciplines, e.g., theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander. Though still timely, the book is overdue, for Africana and Creole people know well the "white gaze" into Black music. Heter interrogates the colonial history and continuum of aural racialism. The Sonic Gaze is a bravely written and provocative text. If Heter’s critiques appear self-destructive, his voice is from within his community. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

• Introduction: Jazz PedagogyChapter One: Sonic OrientationsHearing Race Through Closed EarsWhiteness is a Sonic OrientationExistential Phenomenology Visualism Studying SoundThe Sonic GazeCreolizing ListeningA Woman SpeaksChapter Two: The Jazz Problem: Patterns of White Bad-FaithHow Does It Feel To Be a White Sonic Problem?White Minstrel ListeningWhite Savior ListeningWhite Hipster ListeningWhite Revivalist ListeningWhite Colorblind ListeningUpgraded White Colorblind ListeningEcstatic Listening White Existentialism and The White ProblemListening Exercises for Chapter 2: The Jazz Problem: Patterns of White Bad Faith ListeningChapter Three: Listening to Difference: Creole Critiques of White ListeningThe Creolizing Phenomenology of Sidney BechetWhite Revivalist Listening: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Discovery Plantation Listening: Geography and GenderListening in the Big HouseWhite Women’s Listening The Creolizing Jazz of Edward “Kid” OryJazz is a Verb: The Original Creole Band Francophone Newspapers in New OrleansThe Creolizing Listening of Édouard GlissantListening Exercises for Chapter 3: Listening to Difference: Music and Creole Phenomenology Chapter Four: The Ears of a Guilty People: Africana Critiques of White ListeningThe Sonic Gaze in Black Existential ThoughtW. E. B. Du Bois Frantz Fanon Black Existential Feminist Critiques of White Listeningbell hooksHarlem Renaissance Critiques of White ListeningAlain Locke Zora Neale HurstonAlice Dunbar-NelsonSalem Tutt Whitney: A Voice from Black VaudevilleListening List to Accompany Ch. 4: The Ears of a Guilty People: Africana Critiques of White ListeningAfterword: Say Their Names