Exploring Alt-Alphabetic Texts and Creative-Critical Scholarship
Listen to any of our 18 podcast episodes below.
Season 1 Episode 1: “Welcome; Meet Ames and Trauman; Encountering S. a novel by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst”
In this episode, you meet us, the two hosts of the show, Ames Hawkins and Ryan Trauman. We talk a little about our backgrounds, how we met, and how this podcast came into being. In the second half of the episode, we discuss our first encounter with S., a novel by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. But the book is also a fascinating experiment with storytelling and “book-ness.”
Season 2 Episode 2: “Digital Storytelling; Art Activism; Audio Text Birthday Present for Ames’ Mom”
In this episode, Ames and Trauman discuss a course they taught together this year. It combined writing, digital storytelling, and art activism. Also, Ames reflects on making an audio text as a present for her mom’s 70th birthday.
Season 1 Episode 3: “Going Gurlesque; Learning to Read Again; and more of Abrams and Dorst’s S.”
In this episode, Ames and Trauman continue their conversation about Abrams and Dorst’s novel, S. after reading the first quarter of the book. They find that’s is fascinating. And damn difficult reading. And totally worth it. The second half of the show is Ames’s text: “An Open Letter to Gurlesque.” It’s smart, racy, and beautiful. No doubt a “must-listen.”
Season 1 Episode 4: “The Making of Gurlesque; More of the S. Project”
In this segment, Trauman interviews Ames about how and why it was she turned her written piece, “An Open Letter to Gurlesque” (which you can hear in Episode 3) into an audio text. Conversation ranges from discussion of the ways that two fonts on the page come alive through the voices of Ames and Arielle Greenberg, to Ames’s attempt at writing queer theory, to the ways that visual aspects of text such as footnotes become invisible in a recording. Ames ends by imagining at least one future iteration for the piece as an ASL video.
Season 1 Episode 5: “Audio Editing Software and New Media Design Strategies”
Episode 5 begins with a segment in which Trauman reflects on how he employs an historical understanding of technologies as a central part of his textual design process. It’s pretty much the theoretical background for his design approach for conceptualizing the table of contents of the edited collection: The New Work of Composing. In the second half of the episode, Ames and Trauman discuss a couple of audio editors that are absolutely outstanding for producing audio texts, soundwriting, or podcast episodes. The episodes wraps up by encouraging listeners to attend the Computers & Writing conference this summer in Rochester, NY.
Season 1 Episode 6: “The New Work of Reading; More S. Project Chatter”
In episode 6 of Masters of Text, Ames presents the first part of a three-section piece called “The New Work of Reading,” an experimental audio-autoethnographic piece in which she examines her own process of learning to read multimodal scholarship. This episode also features the third segment of our S. Project, a dialogue that focuses on what we thought about Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of S.. by J.J. Abrahams and Doug Dorst. As an interlude, Trauman offers a spotlight on a couple of texts he recommends our listeners check out.
Season 1 Episode 7: “Vox Fabri, Vox Dea, and Adventures in Microcasting”
In our first segment, “Vox Fabri, Vox Dea,” Ames remixes the responses of 45 participants of the Tenth Biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference. Organized around patterns of answers to two questions–“What’s your favorite FemRhet moment?” and “What’s you’re way of making? This vox populi piece makes clear the magic and magnificence of this conference, one celebrating twenty years.
Our second segment recounts a local “microcasting” experiment produced at Columbia College Chicago’s Parents Weekend. Ames and Trauman organized a participatory “making” session in which students and parents recorded different portions of a common audio text, which were then immediately combined into a short podcast for the participants to listen to and to take with them. Although the session didn’t run perfectly, it was a fascinating (and largely successful) experiment engaging an audience as co-producers of a real-time microcasting.
Season 1 Episode 8: “Storytelling through Marginalia, a Radical Dance Workshop, and Creative Processes as Research Methodologies”
In our first segment, we continue our discussion of S., the experimental novel by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. As we reflect on reading chapters 7,8,9, and an “interlude,” we return to some of the main themes of the book: scholarship, love, identity, documentation, and collaboration. It’s such an amazing book. You should really get yourself a copy, start reading it, and keep listening to us talk about it.
In the second half of the episode, Ames and her frequent collaborator, Phil Bratta have a conversation about participating in a radical dance workshop with Guillermo Gomez Pena and Sara Shelton Mann this past summer.
Season 1 Episode 9: “DIY Audio Cables, Scholars as Makers, Penultimate S. Discussion”
Like most episodes, this one consists of two segments. In the initial segment, Ames and Trauman talk about their adventures into the world of DIY audio cables. Though not without challenges, their efforts were ultimately successful. They reflect on the practical rewards and emotional satisfaction of measuring, stripping, soldering, and testing. And of course the conversation moves beyond the specifics of cable-making in general to larger questions about the value of DIY approaches to scholarship and creative work. And Ames makes Trauman blush. Like three times.
This episode’s second segment brings to your the penultimate discussion of J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst’s experimental storytelling project S. Even thought we LOVE this book, it’s certainly not without its flaws. This is easily our most detailed discussion, and we take the authors to task in a couple of ways they didn’t really deliver on the enormous early promise of this project.
Season 1 Episode 10: “Soundwriting in the FYW classroom”
Ames and Trauman are BACK! After a hiatus caused by the perfect storm of health issues, an unsustainable production schedule, and amazing professional opportunities, Ames and Trauman return to end Season 1 with the first of three episodes. Episode 10 brings the long-ago promised discussion of our collaboratively created and co-taught soundwriting classes. After a pretty quick explanation of what we did, we focus our conversation on what we got out of the experience, and what we believe the students got out of the experience.
In the second part of the episode, Ames and Trauman each choose and offer for your listening pleasure one of our favorite student-created podcast segments. We had a devil of a time choosing, and could have filled hours of MoT with student work—much of which is AMAZING. But we’ve gone with these examples because they illustrate well some of the affordances of sound, and each makes clear the ways that soundwriting expands our understanding of how and when storytelling can inform and be, in and of itself, scholarly work.
Season 1 Episode 11: “Ames’s Amazing Austrian Audio Adventure!”
How’s that for some alliteration. In this episode, one recorded and produced in its entirety in Austria, Ames tells of her experience as an invited speaker and faculty member at the Graz International Summer School, a two-week intensive educational experience organized by the University of Graz that takes place at a Seggau Castle, about forty minutes South of Graz. Ames frames discussion of her visit through the three audio texts she produced following workshops with three different cohorts: 1) a group of nine students at the University of Graz in conjunction with writing center programming; 2) the complete student body of 74 students at the Graz International Summer School 2016; 3) a graduate student praxis seminar at the summer school comprised of all the Ph.D. students in attendance.
Ames recommends, if you’re so inclined, to re-listen (or perhaps first listen), to Episode 7. There, we feature the process involved in producing the Columbia Weekend MicroCAST. And Ames presents a vox pop piece she produced following recording at the 10th Biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference in Tempe, AZ, October 2015. It was the making of “Vox Fabri; Vox Dea,” that directly led to Ames’s invitation to come to Austria. Episode 11 builds upon the knowledge created in Episode 7, extending the scholarly exploration of the affordances and limits of and for the vox pop form.
Season 1 Episode 12: “The ‘S’ Projects we didn’t make, and and the ones we did!”
Well, it took a little bit of time, but we made it! We have successfully, to our satisfaction, completed the first season of Masters of Text! Ames and Trauman return to a final discussion of the project itself, us thinking toward what it is we might turn this into. In many ways, this is a large-form of what we might call a digital sound dialogue. We aren’t simply presenting our edited conversation but will present an edited segment and then discuss what we think now, focusing for the most part on our thoughts of the Masters of Text endeavor. What had we hoped for? What do we believe we accomplished? Is there such a thing as the scholarly podcast? Is this what we made? What is the future of—is there a future for—such a form? What are our plans for the future?
Season 2 Episode 1: “Nox Pre-reading Thoughts and Rethinking a Table of Contents”
In this episode, Ames and Trauman begin by welcoming everyone back to the blog and getting caught up since last season. The episode’s first segment introduces the Masters of Text reading project for the first half of this season: Anne Carson’s Nox. They offer their thoughts on this amazing book and explain why they’re about to read it. In the second segment, Trauman returns to the topic of designing digital texts as he recounts his reading and research process for rethinking the possibilities for a dynamic, responsive Table of Contents.
Season 2 Episode 2: “Reading Nox; Death & Desire Vox Pop”
In this episode, Ames and Trauman discuss their reading of Nox, by Anne Carson. They focus on the ways Carson addresses the larger topics of translation, history, muteness and shame, while highlighting the connections between her work and their own projects. In the second segment, Ames presents yet another vox pop piece. This one includes well over 100 voices, those of students currently in her first year experience course, Death and Desire in Chicago.
Season 2 Episode 3: “Final Reflections on Nox; Conversation with Nickole Brown”
In this episode, Ames and Trauman return to some of the observations they’ve already made about Anne Carson’s Nox, make some connections to other texts with similar projects. In the second segment, Ames and Trauman have a conversation with poet Nickole Brown about Anne Carson’s work and how it has influenced her work and her life as a poet.
Season 2 Episode 4: “Pre-Reading BS Johnson’s The Unfortunates; Reflecting on the Vox Pop”
We open this episode discussing what we’ve been up to this summer. In our first segment, we offer our pre-reading thoughts on BS Johnson’s novel, The Unfortunates. Our second segment focuses on the Vox Pop as a creative critical form and practice.
Season 2 Episode 5: “Discussion of BS Johnson’s The Unfortunates; More thoughts on the Vox Pop”
In this episode’s first segment, we offer the first half or our post-reading discussion of BS Johnson’s novel, The Unfortunates. Our second segment continues our discussion of the Vox Pop as a creative critical form and practice.
Season 2 Episode 6: “Reflections on a Good Run and our final BS Johnson conversation”
In this episode’s first segment, take a minute to look back at what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve learned over the course of our last two seasons of Masters of Text. Our second segment puts a wrap on our discussion of BS Johnson’s book, The Unfortunates. We’ve included a bunch of relevant links below. Enjoy.
