In their introduction, editors Courtney S. Danforth, Kyle D. Stedman, and Michael J. Faris write, “We’re entering an age of soundwriting, where the affordances of sound intersect the pedagogies and practices of writing and rhetoric.” The podcasts in the series, “Soundwriting Conversation: Introducing Soundwriting Pedagogies’ Podcast Project,” provide another way for understanding the content of Soundwriting Pedagogies through the sounds of individuals having a dialogue.
Why this approach? Simple: authenticity. When developing this project, we wanted to create an experience that let readers engage with authors in a way that captured and represented their unique reactions to the work. By putting reader questions and author responses into direct conversation with on me another, we hope to replicate the sounds of a real conversation among scholars.
Our understanding of sound—including what it is and what we can do with it—has, and continues to, evolve. Today’s digital technologies provide new platforms and features for composing with and from sound. Phones, for example, once only capable of connecting the voices of two individuals in a fixed geographical location, now allow individuals to not only hear sound upon its utterance, but also record sound (both with and without visuals), manipulate recorded sounds, create new sounds by synthesizing existing sounds, and circulatesound within diverse networks and communities. As compositionists, we have a unique moment to carefully re-examine, situate, and challenge historical understandings of sound-based writing in today’s digital world.
The editors and contributors of Soundwriting Pedagogies seize upon that moment by examining key and innovative theories and practices of sound in composition through the rhetorical design of sound. In the spirit of their artful use of sound to guide readers through their work, we invited scholars from diverse backgrounds to record thoughtful questions for the contributors, to which they then responded through sound.
The Soundwriting conversations you’ll hear occur between scholars whose interest in sound-based composition have led them to critically reconsider what composition is, and how both traditional and new ways of understanding sound, challenge us to extend our understanding and applications of the composition process. The questions and responses you’ll hear in this series seek to provide a deeper appreciation for how sound can make composition more accessible, meaningful, and engaging.
Check out the first episode below: