Podcasting the Humanities: Creating Digital Stories for the Public

Podcasting has become a common form of storytelling in the digital and social media age. This five-day virtual institute will provide hands-on training for PhD students in the humanities to translate research, commentary, and community-sourced narratives into podcast episodes.

Working in cross-disciplinary and intra-university teams, participants will learn how to storyboard an idea, to create and collect audio content, and to edit their narrative into an entertaining, powerful podcast. All equipment will be provided, and technical support will be given throughout the week. This institute will be in virtual format.

Goals

The program seeks to:

• Encourage emerging humanities scholars to embrace a sense of responsibility for sharing stories of the human experience with diverse American publics.
• Foster new models of expertise that are responsive both to the traditional authority-based credentialing systems of the professional humanities and to the emerging concerns of university-based and public constituencies.
• Grow capacity for collaborative—team, interdisciplinary, cross-university—scholarship.
• Expand humanities professionals’ capabilities for curating humanities materials in a way that adds depth and understanding to contemporary public affairs and cultural conversations.

Participants will:

• Forge new intellectual connections between public life, humanities research, and responsive digital media.
• Deepen collaborative inquiry and project management skills.
• Hone their ability to communicate humanities expertise in accessible and publicly-responsive formats.
• Acquire conceptual and technical skills to create, revise, and publish broadcast-ready podcasts.
• Develop skills and networks valuable within and beyond the university.