General Summary: Professor Davida Charney talks about her scholarly background and how she was drawn toward studying biblical rhetoric. For the majority of the podcast, she analyzes and reflects upon her article Taking a Stance toward God: Rhetoric in the Book of Psalms. In response to several questions about the article from undergraduate students in Mark Longaker’s RHE 321 class, she discusses several aspects of the rhetoric of the psalms, including why an omniscient God should be attempted to be persuaded, who the true audience of the psalms was, rhetorical strategies of the psalmists, and the covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people.

Detailed Summary: Introduction of the podcast and background on Professor Charney (00.00- 01.23); How Charney moved from Penn State to UT Austin and why she moved away from technical writing (01.23-02.16); Charney’s scholarly plans for the future (02.16-03.17); How Charney started doing research and writing about biblical rhetoric (03.17-04.03); Beginning of the discussion about Charney’s article. Charney responding to a question from an undergraduate student (Olivia Speed) about why God should be open to persuasion if he is omniscient (04.03- 07.40); Charney discussing the relationship between the Jewish religion and discourse with God in comparison with other religions (07.40-09.10); Charney discussing how a psalmist may want to try to persuade God in order to make himself more credible in the eyes of the community, in response to a question from an undergraduate student (Cason Hudwick) (09.10-11.22); Charney discussing what the true purpose of trying to persuade God is and who the true audience of the Psalms is, God or the community (11.22-13.23); Charney discussing some rhetorical strategies that the psalmists used and why ethos is one of the most important strategies, in response to a question from an undergraduate student (Jacob Miller) (13.23-16.06); Charney discussing why the psalmists use an “innocent sufferer” archetype and comparing them to other ancient near-Eastern religions (16.06-17.20); Charney discussing an analogy from an undergraduate student (Rebecca Atwood) comparing the relationship between God and the Jewish people to that of a politician and his constituents, emphasizing the covenantal relationship (17.20-19.39); Charney discussing an analogy from an undergraduate student (Cason Hudwick) comparing the relationship between God and the Jewish people to that of a judge and the accused (19.39-22.19); Charney discussing whether or not personal beliefs affect how receptive people are to learning about the psalms from a rhetorical perspective (22.19-24.09); Charney discussing what students walk away with after they complete her upper-division history of rhetoric course about rhetoric in the Old Testament (24.09-25.50); Charney discussing what her favorite psalm is and why (25.50-27.53)

Scholarly Article Informing this Production: Charney, Davida. “Taking a Stance toward God:

Rhetoric in the Book of Psalms.” Jewish Rhetorics, eds. Michael Bernard-Donals and Jan

Fernheimer. Brandeis University Press, 2015. 1-15.

Credits: This podcast was produced by Kendall Haase, Sydney Jones, LaRayne Garza, and Adam Trevino, with resources and assistance provided by Will Burdette and the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. It features the voices of Davida Charney, Adam Trevino, Kendall Haase, LaRayne Garza, Olivia Speed, Cason Hudwick, Jacob Miller, Rebecca Atwood, and Sydney Jones. Music featured in this podcast, titled “commonGround,” was created by airtone and has been repurposed here under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License 3.0. Additionally, conversation.wav was adapted and incorporated under Creative Commons 1.0 License.