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Podcasting: Narrative and Listening in the Digital Age

ENGL 210.303
instructor(s):
M 2-5:00 pm

Amidst all of the changes in the digital world, one thing seems consistent: the need for voices and stories. This course will acquaint students with the fundamentals of podcasting as a form of digital listening and audio narrative. Our focus will be on the ethics of storytelling, or how narrative can become a postcard of a lost, nearly forgotten, or marginalized place and time through the lens of a character. On the one hand, we will study the forms and techniques of audio narrative across the 20th century and into the 21st, from Zora Neale Hurston's documentation of slave narratives to Studs Terkel's oral history of the Great Depression, from online archives to contemporary "sound-walks" that teach us how to listen to place and its hidden ecologies. On the other hand, we will study how to capture excellent audio, conduct an interview, edit in Audacity, use ambient sound and samples, analyze voices and sounds visually and electronically, and disseminate work in online formats. Students will be responsible for locating an interview subject in the area for a final project, which will be presented online. 

fulfills requirements
Elective Seminar of the Standard Major
Sector 6: 20th Century Literature of the Standard Major
Creative Writing Seminar Requirement of the Creative Writing Track