The mission of the SEM Sound Studies Section is to provide a methodologically diverse forum for those engaged in research on sound and space, listening, audience studies, media and technology, and related issues. Much exciting work has been done in these areas in the past several years, and this group offers members a ready audience as well as an opportunity to workshop ideas and further our theoretical conversations. Finally, one of the group's foremost goals will be to facilitate dialogue between ethnomusicologists and scholars in other fields (including acoustics, anthropology, urban studies, otology, neurotology, history, communication, and science and technology studies) who are concerned with topics of aurality.