Literary Listening is a new series offered through The SpokenWeb Podcast.
What is the Literary Listening podcast series?
The Literary Listening podcast series starts from the idea that we listen from positions of cultural protocol and assumption and in doing so practice listening as different kinds of “audile techniques” through distinctly designed approaches and goals (whether explicitly conscious, or not). In The Audible Past, media historian Jonathan Sterne defined “audile technique” (or technique in listening) as “a concrete set of limited and related practices of listening and practical orientations towards listening” manifest as the combination of “a relatively stable set of practical orientations toward sound and listening.” His focus was on the listening orientations discernible in particular historical and disciplinary contexts, namely, those of modern medicine from the 1760s – 1900s, sound telegraphy from the 1840s – 1900s, and then in the context of emergent technologies of sound reproduction, telephony, phonography and radio.
What other vocations, disciplines or professions have developed their own distinct audile techniques? What are the techniques of listening that we associate with the long history of literary study? How do we listen for forms and techniques of listening, and how do we make them heard in sonic essays and soundworks? These are some of the core questions that will inform the productions released through The Literary Listening podcast series. We are open to pitches from scholars, students, and artists from a wide range of disciplines who have thought about listening as a concept, metaphor, and practice, and are interested in communicating their ideas and explorations about sounding and listening in original sonic forms through their release as audioworks in the series.
If you have an idea for an episode of The Literary Listening Podcast, follow the steps outlined below–we’d love to hear from you!
Why make a podcast?
A podcast is like a radio show that has been digitally recorded and distributed online. Typically, podcasts are available for free and listeners subscribe to the podcast feed for new episodes on a set schedule. This medium is considered accessible to creators and listeners alike, and it’s enjoying increasing mainstream popularity.
This particular podcast, The Literary Listening Podcast, will be formally experimental and released periodically when new works are available from our contributors. It targets scholars, students, artists and a general audience of Canadians interested in sound history, literary sound, cultures of listening, and scholarly analysis, who may or may not have any background in these areas. Literary Listening episodes ask questions about the role of listening and sounding in the personal, professional, and academic spheres, engaging in conversations about how listening shapes scholarship and everyday life. Podcasts in this series may approach sound and listening from any number of theoretical approaches using a wide range of historical and sonic examples. They will, at some point, turn their attention to the status, function, and form of “listening”, however defined, in the course of its sonic exploration and explication.
Who can submit pitches?
The Literary Listening Podcast team accepts pitches from students, scholars, artists, and makers across disciplines and backgrounds, regardless of previous podcasting experience. We seek eclectic, original approaches to tackling the podcast’s guiding questions. We are open to contributions from a wide range of perspectives. The Podcast Team will respond to pitches to ensure that the topic is a good fit, and provide additional editing support, review audio to ensure consistent quality, add an introduction and closing credits, and schedule the episode for public release. Otherwise, episode creators will be given creative freedom.
Before you send us a pitch
- Check out A Guide to Academic Podcasting by Hannah McGregor and Stacey Copeland to familiarize yourself with what it is we do at The Literary Listening Podcast (it’s free!). We also recommend reading through the useful SpokenWeb Podcast Creator Guide that was developed for our previous podcast (The SpokenWeb Podcast) to help plan out your episode. Download a handy FAQ sheet specific to The Literary Listening Podcast here [hyperlink].
- Listen to one (or many) of our existing episodes of The SpokenWeb Podcast and/or The Literary Listening Podcast to familiarize yourself with the podcast’s format.
- Pitch an episode to the production team by sending an email to spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. Pitches should include the topic, format (interview, panel, reading, lecture, audio essay), and expected completion date (more details on this are provided in the SpokenWeb Podcast Creator Guide).
Other ways you can support The Literary Listening Podcast
If you are not interested in pitching an episode to us right now, you can still support the show by sharing it with your networks and encouraging members of your research and artistic networks to pitch ideas related to their projects.
If you would like to download the information you’ve just read as a standalone PDF, click here. To visit the old SpokenWeb Podcast “Pitch Us!” page, now archived, click here.