Jaehyeong Yu is a Ph.D. candidate in modern German and Japanese history at Vanderbilt University. Reinterpreting Germany and Japan around 1900 in a global context, his research explores the role of different actors who defined, regulated, and experienced noise as a global phenomenon at the turn of the twentieth century. His stay at Freie Universität Berlin is supported by the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst).

My dissertation, “Navigating “Unpleasant” Sound: Global Discourse and Experience of Noise in Germany and Japan around 1900,” aims to answer the question of how an inherently subjective and nebulous concept of noise became part of knowledge production, politics, and culture during the globalization around 1900. The focus of this study is threefold. First, it looks at how German and Japanese scientists and musicologists defined the term “noise” through academic exchanges across the border. Second, it explores how government authorities and intellectuals in both countries reacted to the changed position of noise by framing it both as a domestic and global phenomenon. Third and last, it analyzes parallel ways of experiencing noise by the German and Japanese public in their daily life outside the framework created by intellectuals and authorities. Overall, this dissertation project presents different ways of dealing with noise in the process of multi-layered global integrations around 1900.