February 4, 2005
Could it get any more boring?…
Derek Mueller is the author of Earth Wide Moth–a very smart blog about…hmmmmmm…it’s difficult to describe. He’s a Ph.D. student of rhetoric at Syracuse University. He was working on his M.A. at UMKC while I was there working on my Ph.D.
One of his classes is writing a blog called Network(ed) Rhetorics. I started insinuating myself into the class by commenting.
To get to the point, Derek asked if I’d podcast my dissertation because he hasn’t the time to read it (joking, of course). So I’m going to do it.
Okay, I’m not going to read the entire thing, and I’m certainly not going to read it all at once. But I think, from time to time, I’ll podcast a bit of it–if for no other reason than to amuse myself.
Posted by acline | February 4, 2005 | Posted in: Podcasts | Comments (5)
Do you take requests? I’d like to hear this part: “This study claims that students do their best work when their learning is connected to their vital civic and political interests. Students should be given the opportunity to explore their vital interests as active agents–critical democratic participants–in a polis.” Thanks.
Well, Andy, if you don’t see a spike in Rhetorica traffic for this, I hope you don’t feel obligated to speak the whole diss just for me (I, for one, listened, learned). But it’s interesting for a whole lot of reasons, I think, including that you’ve bent the genre (unless other folks are diss-casting). And it’s particularly applicable to what’s stacked up on the corner of my desk this week (on reading theory, old literacy, post-literacy…I won’t list it all). I’d be interested in whether reading/recording a bit of your diss and floating it to the weblog impacts how you think about what you wrote or the various ways a project might be circulated, remediated, etc.
Marcia… I gladly take requests. The problem is, as has been pointed out here by other Rhetorica readers, I do a poor job of following up. I promise with all good intentions, but the life of a new asst. prof. is hectic. So, yes, I’ll try. Until then, you might try to secure a copy of my dissertation or read English in America by Richard Ohmann.
Derek… I’ve made some use of parts of my dissertation–cutting it up like so many body parts to build a new monster. Last night’s reading was a lark, but I’ll keep it up to some extent because it amuses me. But, what else might it do for me (or an audience)? How else might I think about it? Hmmmmmm…interesting to think about. I haven’t a clue where to begin to answer these questions.
I can say this: I like my dissertation. I did not suffer the dissertation blues, i.e. get totally sick of it before finishing. I think part if this has to do with the freedom and interdisciplinarity of the UMKC program. I was allowed to write it how I pleased. The text is, from a certain academic perspective, a stylistic mess. Parts are pure first-person narrative. Parts are standard third-person exposition. Parts are essayistic. But each change of style and voice fits the moment and the message.
Diss-casting (I love that!) might actually help me understand the text in light of my new situation. I have been asking myself what the heck it means to be a rhetoric scholar teaching journalism. They hired me specifically because I was not the typical comm scholar (plus my diss topic fits the idea of the U’s public affairs mission and they liked Rhetorica). What does that mean? Well, it’s possible I may be able to find answers in my own text–read on my own blog in the context of dealing with rhetoric and journalism.
i’m so far behind in this sphere. if you don’t mind, what’s a podcast? i’m smart enough to see that “diss-cast” is a derivative play off of the presumed deriv. of broadcast, but… ipods? pod-people?
tyra… podcast refers to the iPod .mp3 player and other such devices. It is possible to embed .mp3 files in .rss feeds. This allows people like me to record “radio shows” and upload them to our weblogs in such a way that anyone with an iPod may download and listen.
You can also just click the link