Douglas Kahn is an historian and theorist of energies in the arts, sound in the arts and sound studies, and media arts, from the late-19th Century to the present.

His books include Energies in the Arts (MIT Press, 2019); Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (University of California Press, 2013); Noise Water  Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (MIT Press, 1999); Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of Digital Arts, edited with Hannah Higgins (University of California Press, 2012); and Source: Music of the Avant-garde, edited with Larry Austin (University of California Press, 2011).

He received an ARC Future Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation. 

He is also Professor Emeritus at University of California at Davis, with previous positions as Professor and Founding Director of Technocultural Studies, UC Davis; Associate Professor of Media Arts and Production, University of Technology, Sydney, and Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance, Arizona State University West.