Oct 262015
 

rhetoric_and_citizenship

I just don’t understand why we have to talk about every mode of belonging as some kind
of citizenship. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m interested in people’s practices of
resistance. I’m interested in people’s practices of belonging. […] I’m interested in people’s practices of world-making.  — Karma Chavez

I’m increasingly persuaded by those who argue citizenship is a toxic concept and a toxic term. When I do talk about folks who appeal to citizenship, I’m very aware of how often those appeals to citizenship are built on the constitutive exclusions of others, and that if we really want to mobilize a productive, an emancipatory sense of civic obligation and of civic duty, we’ve got to figure out a way to do it without buying into a privileging conception of citizenship.  — Cate Palczewski

In Episode 29, we extend a conversation from the 2015 RSA Summer Institute Seminar on Rhetorics of Citizenship. Karrieann Soto and Kate Siegfried host the discussion with co-seminarians Karma Chavez and Cate Palczewski. The episode asks that we critically question rhetorics of citizenship in our scholarship and in daily life. For a full transcript, click here.

Apr 232015
 

We tend to assume that captioning is objective. It’s just copying down. We tend to privilege speech sounds, and there’s just something about speech that sort of makes it seem easier to transcribe. It’s straightforward and objective, but it’s so much more complex than that—especially when you add in non-speech sounds, especially when you consider that everybody has a different way of speaking. —Sean Zdenek

In our field even though composition and communication get hinged together, we have always talked about speech and writing as two different things, and they are and they will be, but I think captioning has this uncanny ability to merge those two back again to turn speech into writing and vice versa. —Brenda Brueggemann

I think at the core of what I’m thinking about is how our technologies and tools and then everything else like this room…which then you have to start thinking about architecture and especially modernist architecture, which was really meant to blockade the public and the private and noise and signal and everything like that. So that’s where maybe the work of Rickert and ambient rhetoric comes in, right? That there are all of these factors in terms of the way that we produce. It’s not, “I have an idea,” and I turn it into this thing. It’s all of these things from the file format to the bugs of the recorder we’re using to construction sounds in the background. I think it’s really just taking an approach and saying, there are all these other things that we’re playing with, not on. —Steven Hammer

Sometimes words are not adequate to describe music. And I think we all know that from listening to music—that music is extra-discursive at times. It’s felt in your body. It’s what Steph Ceraso calls “a multimodal event” where you’re feeling it physically and mentally feeling it. And it is logical and emotional and bodily. —Crystal VanKooten

transcriptiontranslation_header

 

For our 25th episode, we talked with other academic podcasters about the process and practice of podcasting and about sound production more generally. So for this episode, we were interested in thinking again about what it means to produce sound, to manipulate it through editing, to use it to craft logical and ethical and emotional arguments, to translate that meaning into words through transcribing, captioning, or asking students to critically reflect on their rhetorical aural choices. Episode 28 features interviews with Sean Zdenek, Brenda Brueggemann, Steven Hammer, and Crystal VanKooten that took place at this year’s CCCC in Tampa. In some clips, you may hear wind on the water, academic conversations echoing up from the lobby of the convention center, people clapping at the end of presentations. How do those ambient sounds complement or interfere with the content of the interviews? What are the implications of removing all the background sound from these clips, to make the audio as “polished” as possible? How do non-speech sounds contribute to how we make meaning?

To access a PDF of the full transcript of this episode, please click here: Episode 28 Transcript

The songs sampled in this episode are all Podington Bear: “Crunk in the Trunk,” “Alien Language,” “Human Transition,” and “Old Skin.”

Feb 202015
 

I started the research really struggling to understand how seemingly good people could say such awful things, and that’s really what I wanted to understand. I think what I found is that people are not all one thing or another. They aren’t as awful as they seem in a particular moment. Our students are struggling I think to make sense of the world. –Jennifer Trainor

The image features The Rock at MSU, spray painted white with black handprints and bold text that reads #DONTSHOOT. There are green trees in the background a pale blue and pick sky at dusk. The text over the image reads, "(anti-)racism in the classroom: an interview with Jennifer Trainor"

The Rock at Michigan State University painted #DONTSHOOT (September 2014)

As educators, we ought to discuss issues of racism and structural inequality in our classes. How do we do this with students who are in the process of forming their identities, beliefs, and values? Episode 27 features an interview with Jennifer Seibel Trainor, author of Rethinking Racism: Emotion, Persuasion, and Literacy Education in an All-White High School. In this episode, Trainor addresses anti-racist pedagogies and how we can talk about racism productively with students in the classroom, particularly when students may feel defensive about these issues. Trainor argues that we need to read deeper into the racist comments students make in the classroom to try to understand why they’re saying what they’re saying. You can read a review of Trainor’s book in Composition Forum here: http://compositionforum.com/issue/19/rethinking-racism-review.php

To access a PDF of the full transcript of this episode, please click here: Episode 27 Transcript.

The songs sampled in this episode are “Biomythos” by Revolution Void and “From Stardust to Sentience” by High Places.

Dec 182014
 

There’s a certain set of conceits around academic freedom that limit its functionality and its practice, and those conceits often have to do with critiques of state power, critiques of colonization, critiques of structural violence. –Steven Salaita

I think using academic freedom as a way to open these more political conversations and more potentially more transformative conversations about Palestine and about labor, and allowing people to see the connections between these issues is really important. –Vincent Lloyd

Organizing around solidarity communities and connecting with allies and creating networks of solidarity in that way is so crucial. We cannot resist in isolation. –Carol Fadda-Conrey

The image shows a mash-up of the three scholar-activists featured in this episode: Steven Salaita, Vincent Lloyd, and Carol Fadda-Conrey. The text reads, "academic freedom."

Steven Salaita, Vincent Lloyd, and Carol Fadda-Conrey

How do the precarious conditions of academic labor affect the conversations that are possible in the academy? How does academic freedom protect—or fail to protect—academics from doing politicized work? How do questions of Palestine in particular affect our understandings of academic labor and academic freedom—and vice versa? In episode 26, Steven Salaita, who lost a tenured job offer after writing a series of tweets condemning Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge,” talks about the rhetorical commonplaces of civility in the academy, and the stakes of circulating critiques of state power on various media platforms. Assistant professor of religion Vincent Lloyd, and associate professor of English Carol Fadda-Conrey—who helped to organize a talk by Salaita on SU’s campus this fall—reflect on their academic trajectories and political work, offer suggestions for how young scholars can build networks of support, and remind us to realize the critical potential of our discipline.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 26

The music sampled in this podcast is akaUNO’s “Hidden Leaves,” and “Another Word” by The Left Curve.

 

Nov 142014
 

Scholarship is designed to reach some sort of conclusion, even provisional, whereas the podcast because I think it’s still anchored in a kind of entertainment model [stardust clicking] is actually sort of less interested in conclusions and probably also—even if it was interested—that that’s sort of antithetical to the form that it’s working through. You want people to keep coming back. You want them to be able to take the episode with them.

—Nathaniel Rivers

Fragmented sound waves appear as red, yellow, black, and purple shapes layered and gridded onto each other. The text reads, "Invasion of the Pod People."

Episode 25’s spectral pitch display in Adobe Audition

Welcome to our 25th episode! For this meta episode, we solicited contributions from other disciplinary podcasters, so we feature segments from Courtney Danforth and Harley Ferris who edit KairosCast, Casey Boyle and Nathaniel Rivers who co-produce PeoplePlaceThings, Eric Detweiler who helped launch Zeugma, Mary Hedengren who started Mere Rhetoric, and finally Kyle Stedman who hosts Plugs, Play, Pedagogy

To access a PDF transcript of this episode, please click here: Episode 25 Transcript

The music we feature in this episode is “Synergistic Effect” by morgantj and “Scratch My Warhol (ft. Mr. Yesterday & Rey Izain)” by Scomber. There are references in the transcript for the many sound effects used.

 

Oct 242014
 

Can’t we find more creative ways to report these stories? The story of Michael Brown is so important, but we get trapped, I think, in this narrow narrative that we’ve been telling for a really long time. —Tessa Brown

Social media and mobile technology has particularly been important for people of color, for working class people, for immigrants, for LGBT people, people who belong to groups who have been traditionally marginalized in the media because they don’t have to not only wait for the media to tell their stories but they also don’t have to wait to have their stories be misconstrued, too, and have their stories misinterpreted.   —Sherri Williams

These aren’t just flukes, these aren’t just accidents, these aren’t just deviations from an otherwise decent society. The whole society is bankrupt, its corrupt, its racist, its sexist, its homophobic, and ablist and because this is an entrenched deep issue it is going to have to be an entrenched long-term kind of movement to fight those kinds of things.  —Nikeeta Slade

The image shows a screenshot of The Root's tweet featuring an image that went viral during Ferguson protests. The image features a black man with his back to the camera, hands in the air. Facing us are approximately 10 police officers in full riot gear, at least 4 of whom are actively pointing guns at the unarmed citizen.

Tweet from The Root, Aug. 12: “Days after #MikeBrown’s death, #Ferguson looks like a war zone (via @micnews): bit.ly/1orU2GF

Episode 24 focuses on media representations of Ferguson, Missouri after the killing of Mike Brown. As Ben notes in the introduction, This Rhetorical Life focuses on the practice, pedagogy, and public circulation of rhetoric. By focusing on Ferguson, we connect all three: how rhetoric circulates around Ferguson, how our public texts work to either create and sustain or to challenge and resist unjust systems, and how we as writing instructors can help students analyze and flip unjust systems. This episode features interviews with three Syracuse graduate students: Tessa Brown, Sherri Williams, and Nikeeta Slade.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 24

The music sampled in this podcast is “Strange Arithmetic” by The Coup, “Note Drop” by Broke For Free, “EMO Step Show” by The Custodian of Records, and “This is the End” By Springtide.

 

Sep 262014
 

Even as I sort of talk about the notion of community, though, I think that it’s important to problematize that emphasis because it suggests a homogeneity that may inadvertently exclude other voices or presume that a gender issue isn’t also a race issue, a class issue, a sexuality issue. So I think it’s very important even as we sort of try to come together and be advocates and change agents to really use this conference through venues such as the gender caucus tomorrow and the race caucus a little later this afternoon to problematize and not presume that everyone feels included—that we’re one big happy family. Because that’s not realistic. Every community operates within a system of power, and who feels enabled by that, and who feels disenfranchised? — Kris Blair

Telephone operator and switchboard, Kalamazoo, Michigan. RPPC, Postmarked 1908. Image Credit: Wystan.  http://bit.ly/1rojU6h

Telephone operator and switchboard, Kalamazoo, Michigan. RPPC, Postmarked 1908. Image Credit: Wystan. http://bit.ly/1rojU6h

Episode 23 is a special compilation of statements collected from this past year’s Computers & Writing in Pullman, WA. Inspired in part by the excellent line of female keynotes (on disability, access, and women in technology fields), the second year of the gender caucus, and a general urgency in the field—and beyond—to discuss what it’s like to be a woman working and researching and teaching in a male-dominated field, we put out a call for women scholars to share their experiences in the field. This podcast features statements from 12 teacher-scholars ranging from graduate students who attended C&W for the first time to women who have actively shaped the field.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 23

The music sampled in this podcast is “Por Supuesto,” “Blessed,” and “Not the Droid” by Podington Bear, “Homesick” by Keytronic, and “Rain-bow Window” by Diaphane.

May 272014
 

[T]he danger of [sharing posts] is getting swept up when there’s this frantic information exchange, and you find yourself endorsing values and agendas that you would not normally agree with, and that’s a little bit scary. But I think there’s also potential there. This is not to demonize social media as a site of exchange—I think it has tremendous potential. The question here is how to have meaningful conversations. —Yanira Rodriguez

Image of "The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night" blog post--shows image of San Cristobal on fire and the first two paragraphs of the post.

“The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night” via Caracas Chronicles

Episode 22 features a conversation between Ben Kuebrich and Yanira Rodriguez about the representations of the Venezuela protests earlier this year, focusing particularly on how the protests and political situation was represented through the February 20th blog post, “The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night – and the International Media Is Asleep at the Switch.” Kuebrich and Rodriguez raise questions about international news coverage, the representation and circulation of news on social media, and how we can read news articles more critically.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 22

The music sampled in this podcast is “As Colorful as Ever” by Broke for Free, “Adventure, Darling” by Gillicuddy, and “Y por qué no hacer una canción de Facebook y cantarla en un camión?”

May 092014
 

“The ethos of Latina/o Rhetoric is embodied in many of the traditions of resistance that link back to first contact with Europeans in the Americas spanning across time and space to current moments and sites of resistance. Whether it’s the colonialism of Columbus or the neocolonialism of states like Arizona, Latina/o rhetoricians are not lacking in moments of kairos or polemics in the polis that necessitate rhetorical invention to communicate and respond to dominant systems of power.” – Cruz Medina

Fall 2013 cover of Reflections, "Latin@s in Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning"

Episode 21 features a collaboration with the Fall 2013 special issue of Reflections: “Latin@s in Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service-Learning” about how scholars are defining Latina/o rhetorics and why it’s an important issue for the field right now.

To read a PDF of the full transcript, please download it here: Transcript for Episode 21

The music sampled in this podcast is “The Afterlife” by YACHT, “Readers! Do You Read?” by Chris Zabriskie, “Tea Top” by ROW, and “Separate Ways Remix” and “Walking All Day Long” by Willbe.

Apr 232014
 

A lot of times, contingent faculty do an incredible job of being incredibly professional in unprofessional working conditions. I think that’s the first big cost: the humanity and the economic stability of those folks who are in contingent positions—many of whom are grad students, people who have earned Master’s degrees or Ph.D.s, and obviously made commitments to being in higher education and commitments to wanting to teach and be with students. And, ironically, that group that is often the most committed to teaching—the most committed to being there for students—has to just struggle to be in something that they love to do. — Eileen Schell

Screenshot of our podcast on Present Tense with the text, "Celebrating our 20th episode with Present Tense!" http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-3/this-rhetorical-life-thinking-collectively-about-academic-labor/

http://www.presenttensejournal.org

We’re happy to share a special collaboration with Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society for Episode 20! Academic labor is something that greatly concerns us as graduate students, and we think it’s an important concern for both full-time faculty and contingent faculty. That’s why this podcast features the voices of both full-time (Eileen Schell and Tony Scott are both Associate Professors of Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University) and contingent faculty (Jeff Simmons is a Professional Writing Instructor at Syracuse University).

To read a PDF of the full transcript, please download it here: Transcript for Episode 20

The music sampled in this podcast is “N35-40-19-800” by Springtide and “Adventure, Darling” and “Multitudes” by Gillicuddy.