This website represents the combined efforts of the students in Spring 2025’s Listening to Empire graduate seminar. During the course of the semester, we have explored the various ways that the concept of empire (largely in the context of Western European empires) has influenced how sound and music have been produced and perceived up to our present. This project explores these concepts through several pieces of media from the late 20th century to the present, exploring how empire has been portrayed in American film through Star Wars, how America’s own imperial lens has influenced how other cultures are depicted through the animated musicals of Disney, and how these trends intersect in the recent film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. These examples portray how, whether we are aware of it or not, empire has influenced how we both create and consume media.