Abstract

The article identifies a dialectic around which the discourse of the modern American university was built. The University of Chicago, founded on Protestant belief, is described as an intermedial circuit of hearing, listening, and speaking. Crucial in this setup, on the one hand, was the chapel which did not simply convert the voice of God into that of Reason but rather created a new acoustic system whereby a god–like speaker listened to his own voice reverberate around him even as others heard only reasoned argument. On the other hand, in the seminar room professors listened to one another and to their students with “inner ears” tuned to pick up even the most subtle signal in the ambient noise of a conversation about “great books.”