William Ray Macauley

en

William R. Macauley is a postdoctoral Research Associate within a Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Playing God: Exploring the Interactions Among the Biosciences, Religion, and Entertainment Media’ at the University of Manchester. His current research focuses on the portrayal of science and medicine in faith-based entertainment media, notably film and television from the post-war period to the present. Previously, he worked as a Research Associate in the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at the Freie Universität Berlin. His research in Berlin focused on ways in which various professional and social groups in Europe and the United States produced and disseminated knowledge about outer space and spaceflight during the post-war period. He is presently writing a monograph based on his doctoral thesis “Picturing Know­ledge: NASA’s Pioneer Plaque, Voyager Record and the History of Interstellar Communication, 1957–1977”, and a second book titled “Science for the Soul: The Portrayal of Biosciences and Medicine in Faith Based Entertainment Media (c. 1960 – 2010)”.

research

research expositions

  • Editorial: Venturing into Sounds of Space (2014) author(s): William Ray Macauley published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
    How have sonic experiences been conceived, articulated, and elided in histories of outer space and narratives of space exploration? This was the core question addressed in a multidisciplinary workshop Sounds of Space hosted at the Freie Universität Berlin in late 2012. This Journal of Sonic Studies (JSS) special issue includes a selection of articles based on papers presented at the workshop. Using a variety of themes as entry points and mobilizing an array of analytical tools, contributors to the special issue revisited the core question in addition to engaging with related questions that focus on specific sites, historical actors, organizations, and situated practices that encapsulate how our understanding of space is mediated in and through sound. Before introducing the individual contributions and additional material, I will say something about how the conception of the original workshop was primarily based on close encounters with sounds of space during my doctoral research on the history of interstellar communication (Macauley 2010). Further, I will examine how the workshop and present collection emerged from the desire to critically engage with a cluster of anomalies, elisions, and assumptions uncovered during research on the historical relationship between sound and space that prompted a series of perplexing questions.
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  • Altisonans (2014) author(s): William Ray Macauley published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
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