Masters of Text

In this episode's first segment, we 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're back! 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.

We had so much great material from our conversation with poet, Nickole Brown, we couldn't fit it all into our previous episode. Maybe it's a little self-indulgent, but you'll just have to deal with it. Ames asks Nickole to reveal her personal superpower, and then Ames has to reveal her own. Finally, Trauman adds his own. If you want to find out how we plan to continue to defend the universe, you'll just have to listen in. 

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.

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.

Music Credits: "ditto, ditto!" by DoKashiteru; "Hiroshima" by Bluemillenium.

For more information about this episode or about Masters of Text, please visit our website at MastersOfText.com

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. 

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! This is

We end where we began, with the S Project and return to some audio we recorded just about exactly one year ago. In Episode 09, way back in December.

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?

How's that for some alliteration. In this episode, one recorded and produced in it's 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.

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.

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. In the Creative-Critical-Scholarly-Spotlight (CCSS) section, Ames points to a few different texts. They include:

• Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society (Vol. 5.2: Special Issue on Race, Rhetoric, and the State).
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.
• Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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. And stay tuned for an additional blog post where Trauman offers more detailed information about the cable making materials and techniques he and Ames discuss in this episode.