Cities of Sound began as a 2021 Paper Session of the Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association. Chaired by BGSU Graduate students Pella Felton and Robin Hershkowitz, Cities of Sound
Call For Papers
The following Call For Papers was published in March of 2021:
Since its early origins as audio-blogs and located in radio studies, podcasting has been shaped by the proliferation of digital performance, participatory media, and mobile electronic devices. These forces have created a medium uniquely associated with the performance of intimacy among both listeners and content creators. However, as the medium expands into commercial and noncommercial spaces, the contexts of this intimacy continue to shape and be shaped by the public spheres it operates in. This virtual (online) session explores podcasts and podcasting as virtual literary and performance publics. This session invites media, literary performance, sound, and cultural studies approaches to podcasting as public texts, media, and performances.
Submissions may address the following questions:
How do podcasts invite intimate relationships between text and audience?
How does the proliferation of headphones and mobile audio devices create material experiences of shared community within public and private spaces?
How do podcasters and listeners perform within this shared community?
How do these podcasts manifest literary or theatrical impulses?
Session Format
This virtual panel is delivered asynchronically via downloadable recordings, and then as an in-person/virtual roundtable talkback session. Each presentation is currently available for download or streaming in MP3 form as an individual podcast episode . Submissions included traditional paper presentations as well as less formal conversational approaches to public scholarship. produced podcast documentaries, or practice as research.
Applicants were asked to submit an abstract including title, format, and expected audio run-time. Then participants came together as a makeshift working group via the Podcast PhD’s network where we set goals for the panel. In November of 2021 panelists submitted audio of their “papers” which were then edited into episodes of the podcast which were then distributed to platforms all over the world during the 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association Conference in Las Vegas. On November 15, the chairs and panelists convened online via Zoom for an informal roundtable to discuss their research.
Keywords:
Podcasting, Podcast Studies, Listening Publics, Media Studies, Performance Studies.