This episode features a roundtable conversation by contributors to Teaching Students to Podcast, an open-access, lesson plan-based manual on integrating podcasts into humanities courses. That manual was written by members of the Humanities Podcast Network's pedagogy working group. The discussion features six of its coauthors: Ulrich Baer, Robin Davies, Eric Detweiler, Emmy Herland, Beth Kramer, and Harly Ramsey. They discuss how they came to podcasting and teaching podcasts, their respective sections of the manual, and the possibilities and challenges of having students make podcasts in courses in and around the humanities.

This episode features a clip from Ketsa's "I Hear Echoes."

Episode Transcript

This episode features an interview with Dr. Keith Gilyard conducted by guest host Dr. Derek G. Handley during the 2023 Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute at Penn State University. They discuss Gilyard's path to a career in rhetoric, writing, and composition studies; his writing process and creative writing; academic mentorship and leadership; and his legacy and contributions to the field of African American rhetoric.

Keith Gilyard is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State University. He formerly was a member of the faculty at Syracuse University and at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. He served as Thomas R. Watson Visiting Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville and as Presidential Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Oklahoma. The author of twenty-four books, his works include the education memoir Voices of the Self (1991), Composition and Cornel West (2008), On African American Rhetoric (with Adam Banks, 2018), biographies of John Oliver Killens (2011) and Louise Thompson Patterson (2017), the novella The Next Great Old-School Conspiracy (2015), and the poetry collections Impressions (2021) and On Location (2023). Gilyard is a former Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and former president of the National Council of Teachers of English. He is the recipient of two American Book Awards, the CCCC Exemplar Award, the NCTE Distinguished Service Award, and the RSA Cheryl Geisler Award for Outstanding Mentor.

This episode features a clip from "Super Glue" by Plushgoolash.

Episode Transcript

This episode features an interview with Jennifer Lin LeMesurier. The conversation, recorded at this year's Conference on College Composition and Communication, focuses on her 2023 book Inscrutable Eating: Asian Appetites and the Rhetorics of Racial Consumption. That book explores how the rhetorical framing of food and eating underpins our understanding of Asian and Asian American identity in the contemporary racial landscape.

Dr. LeMesurier is Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Colgate University. Her areas of expertise include bodily and material rhetorics, genre theory, discourse analysis, qualitative research, and affect theory. In addition to Inscrutable Eating, she co-edited Writing in and about the Performing and Visual Arts: Creating, Performing, and Teaching with Steven J. Corbett, Betsy Cooper, and Teagan E. Decker. To date, she has published articles in College Composition and Communication, Peitho, POROI, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric Review, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly.

This episode features a clip from "Just a Taste" by Beat Mekanik.

Episode Transcript

This episode of Rhetoricity features members of the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on AI and Writing: Antonio Byrd, Holly Hassel, Sarah Z. Johnson, Anna Mills, and Elizabeth Losh. The task force also includes Leonardo Flores, David Green, Matthew Kirschenbaum, and A. Lockett. In July 2023, that task force published a working paper laying out issues, principles, and recommendations related to the effects of generative artificial-intelligence tools on the college writing courses.

In this episode's roundtable discussion, these task force members clarify some of the terminology around AI technologies, reflect on the process of writing the working paper, and discuss the pedagogical, historical, and labor implications of large language models for students and teachers working in higher education.

This episode is part of The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival 2023, which runs from August 28–31. The theme of this year's carnival is "Artificial Intelligence: Applications and Trajectories," and it features a keynote by Dr. Isabel Pedersen. Other participating podcasts include 10-Minute Tech Comm; Defend, Publish and Lead; Kairoticast; Live Theory; Neurodissent; Pedagogue; TC Talk; and Writing Remix.

Here's a list of some of the materials referenced in this episode:

• The task force's Quick Start Guide
• TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies, including Antonio Byrd's chapter "Using LLMs as Peer Reviewers for Revising Essays"
• Anna Mills's How Arguments Work
• Black in AI
• Kate Crawford's Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
• The White House's Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights
• Kathryn Conrad's "A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights for Education"
• Hugging Face
• The Wall Street Journal's "Cleaning Up ChatGPT Takes Heavy Toll on Human Workers"
• The Washington Post's "Behind the AI Boom, an Army of Overseas Workers in 'Digital Sweatshops'"
• Memes of the brawl in Montgomery, Alabama

This episode features a clip from "Artificial Problems" by Smoked Meat Fax Machine.

Episode Transcript

This is the third Rhetoricity episode guest-hosted by Dr. Derek Handley. It's also part of The Third Annual Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival.

The episode was recorded at the 2022 Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, and marks the two-year anniversary of the protests against anti-Black police violence that took place in the summer of 2020. Moderated by Dr. Handley, it features a roundtable of Black rhetoricians: Tamika Carey, David Green, Andre Johnson, Ersula Ore, and Gwendolyn Pough. They share the paths and choices that led them to become rhetoric scholars, reflect on the limitations of antiracist initiatives in higher education since 2020, and discuss the extra work colleges and universities often demand of Black faculty as well as the ongoing work and importance of supporting Black students and faculty across educational institutions.

This episode features clips from the following:

• "Circle Round" by Spinning Clocks
• "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" from The Muppet Movie

Episode Transcript

Today's episode was originally broadcast as part of The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival 2020, but is finding its way to the Rhetoricity feed in full for the first time. Focus on the carnival's theme of "The Digital Future of Rhetoric and Composition," the episode draws on shows like Adventure Time and Lovecraft Country as well as the present and future realities of the COVID pandemic, racism, and climate change to consider what our disciplinary futures might hold.

This episode includes clips and quotations from the following:

• “Come Along With Me” – Adventure Time
• The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
• “Future Peace” – Uuriter
• “Future You” – Chad Crouch
• “Future’s Entry” – Lately Kind of Yeah
• “How Long ‘til Black Future Month” – N. K. Jemisin
• “Our Future” – Sergey Cheremisinov
• “Simon & Marcy” – Adventure Time
• “Sundown” – Lovecraft Country

Episode Transcript

This episode features an interview with Cedric Burrows conducted by guest interviewer Derek G. Handley. Their conversation focuses on Dr. Burrows' 2020 book Rhetorical Crossover: The Black Presence in White Culture. Along with many other topics, they discuss his writing process, the music and social movements he takes up in his research, the role of personal stories in theoretical writing and Black intellectual traditions, and how he decided to pursue a career in rhetoric and composition.

Dr. Burrows is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Marquette University. In addition to being the author of Rhetorical Crossover, he has published work in an array of scholarly journals and was the winner of Marquette's 2020 Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Faculty Award.

Dr. Derek Handley is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is also affiliate faculty in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies. He is currently working on a book project that explores the rhetorical and civic actions taken by African Americans in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 1950s and ‘60s as they attempted to protect their communities from urban renewal.

This episode includes clips from the following:

• "Milwaukee" by talons'
• "Leftovers" by Millie Jackson
• "What a Difference a Day Makes" by Dinah Washington

This episode features guest interviewer Derek G. Handley speaking with Dr. April Baker-Bell. They discuss Dr. Baker-Bell's book Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy as well as her work on such projects as the Black Language Syllabus and "This Ain't Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!"

Dr. April Baker-Bell is a transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. A national leader in conversations on Black Language education, her research interrogates the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies, and is concerned with antiracist writing, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and self-preservation for Black women in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women. Baker-Bell’s award-winning book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, brings together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism (a term Baker-Bell coined) and white linguistic supremacy. The book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and it captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in community with Black youth. Linguistic Justice features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate. 　 Baker-Bell is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's New Directions Fellowship, the 2021 Michigan State University's Community Engagement Scholarship Award and the 2021 Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Creative Activity, the 2020 NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, the 2019 Michigan State University Alumni Award for Innovation & Leadership in Teaching and Learning, and the 2018 AERA Language and Social Processes Early Career Scholar Award.

Dr. Derek G. Handley is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is also affiliate faculty in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies. He’s currently working on a book project that explores the rhetorical and civic actions taken by African Americans in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 1950s and ‘60s as they attempted to protect their communities from urban renewal. He is also collaborating on a digital public humanities project with his UW-Milwaukee colleague Anne Bonds entitled “Mapping Racism and Resistance in Milwaukee County.” That project uses GIS mapping and rhetorical analysis of racial housing covenants and African American resistance to them in Milwaukee County.

This episode contains a clip from Podington Bear's "Detroit."

Episode Transcript

This episode features an interview with John R. Gallagher conducted by guest interviewer Sarah Riddick. The interview focuses on Gallagher's 2020 book Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing. Gallagher and Riddick discuss the labor and upkeep involved in the digital writing practices of journalists, Amazon reviewers, and redditors, the methods and questions that inform Gallagher's work, and that work's implications for scholarly writing.

John Gallagher is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He studies interfaces, digital rhetoric, participatory audiences, and technical communication. He has been published in Computers and Composition, enculturation, Rhetoric Review, Transformations, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Written Communication. In addition to Update Culture, he co-edited a 77-chapter collection with Dànielle Nicole DeVoss titled Explanation Points: Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. As he mentions in the episode, he's also part of a team working on a National Science Foundation grant entitled "Advancing Adaptation of Writing Pedagogies for Undergraduate STEM Education Through Transdisciplinary Action Research."

Sarah Riddick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she directs the degree-granting Professional Writing program and teaches courses about rhetoric and writing. Her research focuses on the intersections of rhetorical theory, digital rhetoric and cultures, and emergent media. She is currently exploring how social media offers new methodological and pedagogical opportunities for rhetorical studies, with a particular emphasis on how online audience engagement can inform and enhance methodological approaches to rhetorical audience studies and digital rhetorics.

This episode features a clip from YACHT's "The Afterlife (Instrumental)."

Episode Transcript

This episode features an interview with Tarez Samra Graban, an associate professor in the Department of English at Florida State University. Dr. Graban was also the keynote speaker at Middle Tennessee State University’s annual Peck Research on Writing Symposium in February 2020. This interview was recorded just after that keynote, which was titled “Rhetoric, Feminism, and the Transnational Archive.”

In this interview, Dr. Graban discusses her work on global and transnational rhetorics, archival methods, and rethinking the role and structure of rhetoric and writing majors at US universities. In particular, we discuss four of her projects. First, Alternative Sources for Rhetorical Traditions, an collection coedited by Graban and Hui Wu. Second, Teaching Rhetoric and Composition through the Archives, another collection Dr. Graban is coediting, this time with Wendy Hayden. Third, her 2017 article “Decolonising the Transnational Archive,” which was published in the African Journal of Rhetoric. And finally, a chapter she cowrote with Meghan Velez for the Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics, which came out last year.

This episode features a clip from Mystery Mammal's "Archives."

Episode Transcript