Sustainin' Conversation Episode 2: Teach, Research, Podcast, Repeat
Amplified is an audio blog series about the sounds of scholarship from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. This month, we'll be sharing a series of three episodes we're calling Sustainin' Conversation from a round-table conversation we had with members of our first Sustain stream: Sally Chivers (Wrinkle Radio), Charisse L'Pree (Critical and Curious), M.E. Luke (Critical Technology Podcast) and Megan Goodwin (Keeping it 101: A Killjoy's Guide to Religion). In this second episode, we hear from the podcasters about their approaches to making their podcasting count in the institution, the way podcasts can be integrated into the classroom, and more.
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Stacey: Hello and welcome to a special three-part series of the Amplified Audioblog that we’re calling “Sustaining Conversation.” I’m Stacey Copeland, co-director here at Amplify and Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage and Identity at the University of Gronigen. For this miniseries, we gathered the hosts of the Amplify Podcast Network’s first cohort of Sustain podcasters to answer three questions about scholarly podcasting. In this second episode, we’re going to learn more about how scholarly podcasters incorporate their podcasting work into their research and teaching. But first, a quick roll-call.
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Sally: I am Sally Chivers. I'm a professor at Trent University. My podcast is called Wrinkle Radio.
Charisse: Hello, I am Charisse L'Pree. And I am the host of Critical and Curious with Robert Thompson, coming from Syracuse University at the Newhouse School.
M.E.: So my name is Mary Elizabeth Luka. I'm at the University of Toronto, and I am the director at the Knowledge Media Design Institute where we have a podcast that is called The Critical Technology Podcast …
Megan: Hi, hello, I am Megan Goodwin, I am the co host and CO producer of keeping it 101 A killjoys introduction to religion podcast, where we dare to ask the question, do you have to care about religion if you yourself are not religious? Spoilers the answer is yes.
Stacey: You’ll also hear from my co-director here at the Amplify Podcast Network, Hannah McGregor.
Hannah: It’s me again! Hi! I’m Hannah McGregor, I’m the co-director of the Amplify Podcast Network, and this is my voice.
Stacey: In the last episode we heard the Sustain podcasters talk about how podcasting as a medium gives them space to work through ideas out loud, how it can function as a counter-action against the gatekeeping of scholarly publishing, and the pleasures of incorporating media production into scholarly work. Now on to our second question.
Stacey Copeland:
So what I was curious to hear more about is I'm interested in how your podcasting has become embedded in your research and teaching. So in particular, how is scholarly podcasting received by your institution? And how is it received among your peers? And furthermore, is it actually counted as part of your research? And what does that mean in practice in terms of workload and funding in your every day?
Charisse L'Pree
Okay, couple things I would like to take the opportunity to amplify my former dean, Lorraine Branham was the first Black woman to ever serve as Dean as a communication school in the United States. She was wonderful. I loved her, she passed away in 2019 of cancer. I miss her terribly. When I was coming up for tenure, like So Bob, and I had started doing this thing because it was fun. And then like, we're like, ooh, we could watch. We can watch Fast and Furious and get deep, you know. And so we got funding for students to work as our producers. So I wasn't technically producing. I was doing some editing, but whatever. So the university because we are also a production school, all of our undergrads are production undergrads. So my department saw it as an opportunity for students to get involved and kind of bridge research and teaching. And my school has paid for all of our server space and all of that other stuff. So that's cool. But when I went up for tenure, Lorraine looked at it and she said, You have to include this, you have to include this and you have to amplify it, you have to make it part of your narrative. So to hear that from the top down, was really exciting and inspiring. So I ended up actually, so we have a couple models at New House. It's a teaching model and a research model and a sort of equivalency model. And the goal was to go up on the equivalency model, but when you teach diversity and you are the only, you know, Black woman teaching in a department in a school of 100 faculty, you lose time with the research, right? There's students constantly coming and crying and all of these things happening. So I ended up going on a teaching model and It was a part of looking at how I was teaching in a wide variety of ways. So both in the classroom, in public talks that I would give, student mentorship, and the podcast. So I would also assign the podcast as readings for my students, they would then share it with their friends, right. So basically breaking out of the ivory tower with ivory tower content for lack of a better term. And so it the way I sold it, and for those of you going up on tenure, and for what you've spent your academic time doing podcasts, happy to share my tenure packet happy, you should totally lift language or format, because it is so important when you go up for tenure to justify what you've done. Not necessarily… Yeah, you gotta get these pubs in these places, and blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, if you can stitch together a larger narrative that connects those pubs with like your passion, it makes your entire packet stronger. And I will say later this month, there is a book coming out from Shardé Davis, who is a professor at UConn. Associate Professor of Communications at UConn, called Being Black in the Ivory. And it's a collection of vignette essays, by Blackademics, I believe is the term they're using. And so I have a piece in there about the trials and tribulations and struggle of my tenure experience. It is technically a satirical essay. So hopefully it'll make you cry, as we can only laugh through our pain. So I will say that it was a it was a rough slog, but I'm proud of my packet, because I am proud of my work, including this podcast.
Hannah McGregor
National Humanities Center is currently doing a project where they're gathering profiles of scholars who got tenure, doing, like non traditional research-creation kind of work. So they can like start to build a resource of people who have demonstrated that you can get tenure through things that are not conventional publications. And I think it's so vital to be like, sharing these packages and these narratives and these these, these ways that we have found to like navigate the institutions in non traditional ways.
M.E. Luka
I can jump in I partly because I think I can pick up on some of these threads too. And particularly this notion that, you know, how do you how do you be an academic in the way that suits you. And podcasting is one of kind of many modes that I operate in. And I and I say that with total impostor syndrome, because I'm like, but I haven't actually done any recordings for podcast yet. We're just in the pre production stage. However, I have, you know, my entire life has been wrapped up in media production. And that's one of the reasons why the school that hired me wanted to hire me is because I have this particular background. And then part of course, what happens is that they say, in order to, for you to be ready for tenure, in order for you to be promoted, and recognized in the institution, you have to strike a balance of traditional or classic and whatever it is that you're actually doing. Now, the upside for me, is that I my primary appointment is in a department that is Arts, Culture, and Media. So it's, it's, it's more than half of it is creative production, or artists. And so we have a very good understanding internally, about what it is that we do and what what means. What means good, or what means interesting. But and so we also see this as kind of like a, you know, Charisse, like as you were saying, it's kind of like it's our responsibility, then to also talk up the institution, right? Like, we have to speak up inside the institution and say, Look, if you see what the kind of work is that's required in order to produce a podcast, or a video series or an Open Access database, which is something I also do then, and the kind of rigor that comes into that and the number of people who are involved in the kind of administrative work and the kind of scholarly work that's required. I'm telling you, this is a book. This is a book. And so that's one of those kind of like, how do we translate inside the institution and having come from Concordia University where Kim Sawchuk was, Kim and Owen Chapman have developed a kind of a schematic of here is In the family of resemblances of the research creation side, how do you think about the type of research creation that you're doing? And so that you can articulate it? In exactly those kinds of in exactly those kinds of contexts? Right. So is it that you're translating research? Is it that you're producing an exhibition, which is the work? Is it that you're working in community with participants and doing something together, which makes it closer to, you know, action research kind of traditions, there are ways to kind of analyze it and think about it that are really compatible with the academic system, but also think about, who is it who's involved in this process? And how are you doing your work? And podcasting? So it is. So in the environments that are operating within my school, and I'm lucky to be in a gigantic school with a lot of resources, I can find people within my institution who will support this work, right? Yes, spending time on this is acceptable, especially if I can subsequently have a publication that relates to it. And again, to Charisse's second point, one of the ways in which it's been really successfully argued in portfolios has been on the teaching side, right? These become resources that students are more likely to access and use, right? They will listen to a podcast, they will watch a video, even what is the what are the website resources that are associated with a podcast that come and so all of those elements become really important teaching tools, if you like, or ways of expressing work in that kind of context. workload, however [laughs], it's kind of like I would say, compared to 10 years ago, when I started down this road, that in the institution, post PhD, I can't believe it will be 10 years this summer, that it's much more acceptable to have this kind of variety of approaches. So yeah. Like it.
Stacey Copeland
So M.E. and Charisse are coming from more media and communication departments. I'm curious, Megan, Ilyse, Sally, how do their comments so far actually resonate with your own experiences?
Megan Goodwin
So let me start with, in a lot of ways, Ilyse's work and Ilyse herself at the University of Vermont as a Land Grant Institution that takes seriously or says it does the public education of the people and not just the people at the university. She has been an incredible success story. We are hosting an award winning podcast that is listened both listened to both by truly all of her students, and many, many of her colleagues, students, but also my audiences we truly never could have imagined. And we can circle back to that later. She's also been really successful in helping rewrite the tenure standards of her department to make sure that this kind of labor counts, yes is teaching and that's important, but it is research-based. And I think it's very important. And I know at Ilyse thinks it's very important to advocate for this as a credible and frankly, imperative form of research. And it's been lovely to see the way that her colleagues are lifting her up. The chair Tom Borchert was really emphatic that Ilyse go through and count up how much writing she had done for the podcast. So that counted toward the production that is valued in her tenure and promotion packets. So that's been amazing. That said, I am sitting as I so often do with Tressie McMillan Cottom's argument that universities are happy to take credit for public work, they will take everything for public work except the risk right the her very famous piece on this is Everything But the Risk. This is both true for what Ilyse has been up to, but Ilyse is a target in a way that I am not. She is very open about the fact that she is Jewish. She's very open about the fact that she studies Islam as she must be as one of the very few university level scholars of Islam in the state of Vermont. So she is politically active and she is visible and she is loud. And I love her for that. But it also makes her a target for unrelenting public hate in a way that I truly cannot imagine. And the university has done very little, if anything, frankly, to support her in that. I am also struck that the piece that's missing from Cottom's essay is a consideration of what happens when the university itself is the risk. Because UVM tried to eliminate Ilyse's department. And the only thing, I think truly that saved religious studies as a discipline at UVM was the fact that the department came together and made a really strong case for why it needed to persist. But also there was so much public attention directed toward Ilyse, specifically, because she is such a public figure. And I mean, there's the physical safety and the physical risk piece of this too. But a number of you have raised the the labor and the workload piece of this. There's absolutely obviously a huge production labor cost in creating podcasts. But also, one of the reasons that we've been able to build the platform we have is because Ilyse did extra work to get us money. And applying for grants is its own kind of labor. But then because she's at a public university, the distribution of what seems to me like very small amounts of funds, becomes a full time job, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years that Ilyse had to spend, to spend down a $5,000 grant, because we wanted to give it out to folks who were participating who were creating knowledge in and through our podcast was mind boggling to me, it was just stunning. So this work costs and it costs an unexpected and invisible ways. And I am really grateful to Ilyse, for helping me see that better, and see that more clearly. And just get really cranky about it in public as often as I can. Because I think people just don't know. And particularly if you've only ever been at one institution, if you've only ever been at a private university, which has mostly been my experience after grad school, you have no idea what public school faculty have to go through to do this kind of work. And that's not a thing that you can write into your tenure and promotion packet. Right? Answering as myself, lol what institution, your girl’s gone rogue like I don't have a job. So that's not fair. I have no I don't I don't have a job. I have a ton of work somehow, but no actual employment. And it's kind of great to be honest, like, rip to your grandma. But I'm built different. Like this has just been such a joyous way to engage in scholarship on religion without having to worry about which colleagues I'm pissing off because what are you going to do not hire me? Too late. But also, it has been such a trip to hear from colleagues, friends, and frankly, folks, I don't know from Adam, that they're using our work in their classes. Like we're a textbook. Somehow that had happened. So I have far more respectable colleagues, who, frankly are far more competitive than I am. Because again, I generally tend to forget that other people are even listening to this thing that we're doing, who are so so mad at us for the fact that we are doing this a at all, B and the way that we are doing this with all the cuss words and all the jokes and all the ridiculousness and just doing it as ourselves as our full selves, and somehow are being taken not just seriously by the academy, but like more seriously, in a foundational way than I think either of us could ever have anticipated. I don't know, maybe Ilyse saw this for herself. I certainly did not. So knowing that we have become, like, the theoretical groundwork for how, honestly, a staggering number of undergrads in the study of religion are learning to think about religion. That's, that's dope. I, I am so excited and so humbled to be part of that, and it really does not seem real. And it's also just been such a balm after a decade plus of vocational trauma, to realize it is possible to do this work in a way that really reaches people that really, frankly, changes things without having to do it, like and also sit through faculty meetings, so sorry, y'all but I don't have to do that anymore. And I'm sure it's important, but it's not. It's just not my ministry. So hey, thanks.
Stacey Copeland
Okay, and finally, Sally, how are all the comments resonating with you?
Sally Chivers
The what Megan was just saying about the full self and vocational trauma resonates with me 100% And even though I'm coming at it from a different place in my career where I've been a full professor for longer than I can remember like way way too fast a lot of security, you know, research star within a pretty small pond with all due respect to Trent. And it's yeah, rather than what are you going to do not hire me I have had this sort of thought of like, what are you going to do fire me? But also I don't want actually to get fired I don't think like this is the kind of thought pattern I've I've come to the podcast with which isn't as helpful for me to answer this question for people who would like to podcast while trying to navigate. I like we can't even call them hoops like the maze, the vicious like traps of the steps up the academy and, and they are steps, right they're not ramps like I'm not being ableist in saying that I am calling the academy out in that way too. What I have found in deciding to just be my full self and do a podcast is support from individual colleagues at my institution. First episode, a VP of things like government and outside and publicity, the name changes all the time, writes to me directly about how meaningful the content of that was wonderful, right? At the same time, my podcast was featured on CBC’s The Current I was interviewed on that, usually Trent would have a banner and a parade, right? That would be on the front page of their site. Definitely every other time I've been on like local tiny, but very important media, or any kind of like CBC, for when I was the chair of Canadian Studies, my dean would write to me great interview, send me a photo of the story I didn't hear boo, like not a peep. So there's this there's a weird silence. But I, I just don't care anymore. So I'm not kind of hurt or concerned about that. We're gonna have to kind of do a shout out to Kim Sawchuk in the publicity for this because one of the ways I've been able to integrate this into my research is that I'm a member of partnership grant that Kim leads. And when I showed up to our governance meeting, I was just like, I'm doing this, like I am doing this podcast. So whatever projects you want me to do, like, good luck, I'm doing this. And Kim is magical. And kind of read that and was like, I hear that you're doing a podcast, let's make it part of the project, right. And then there are ways I've been able to apply within that project for funding. I've also been able to get a tiny like few $1,000 knowledge mobilization grant from a university, not a research grant, because I was told this wasn't research, which meant I didn't have to go through a research ethics. So I'm not actually entirely upset about that. I've also found a way because I've been on a bunch of these partnership grants as the sole humanities or one of very few humanities members in a dominantly social sciences team, right? So we're studying nursing home care, and how to fix it. And we've got GPs, and we've got nurses, and we've got ergonomists. And then we've got me saying, you know, if you watch cinema, about nursing homes, you can learn a lot of the same stuff we're learning people, like didn't have a way to translate that into serious knowledge. And so I became window dressing there. And now I find I'm doing my podcast, and I can interview those people. I have been in these places with them. And I can turn that into the stories that I know parts of the public would like to hear about the research when they're not going to read the articles about wound care. As important as those might be. In terms of research or in terms of teaching. I had the most beautiful thing happen last semester for my master's in interdisciplinary aging studies course. And I had this lovely, very earnest student say he called me Dr. Sally, which I also kind of loved. So he said, Dr. Sally, I have to confess, I haven't done the reading. And I'm like, okay, how do you manage this moment? Because, you know, me either sometimes, but also, you know, we need to set a model right? So, and he says because I had just released an episode that day or no the night before, on a similar topic, and he said he listened to it four times. So I hadn't sent out the link or anything and he just spent so much time with it. I get it. He may have been like playing me and he played me like a violin like perfectly virtuosically If so, but I have found like I have assigned it on in my own courses. And I just feel so confident and comfortable. Coming back to the full self part with how I present myself in it when students come across that it's me, right? When students come across my peer reviewed article, it's part of me that got chopped into like this, it went from being this beautiful like monstrosity that was going to maybe change something and scare people in good ways to like a kind of smoothed out little puppet. And like, I say that knowing how hard you're all working to have peer reviewed podcasts taken seriously, and also having faith that your process will not do that to your podcasts. Right? Because they I, from what I understand the way your process is working, each step of the way is still captured and preserved publicly. Right, as opposed to that kind of secretive peer review. So yeah, I think that and yeah workload. I don't know, I haven't figured that out yet. I started it as a sabbatical project. And there it was an awesome thing. This term, I have a fuller teaching load, and the bags under my eyes are telling the story. But I'm still fed by the work I'm doing with the podcast. And, and I'm doing it all, like I'm doing all the production, every little part of it. So that may need to change going forward.
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Stacey: Thanks for listening to “Sustaining Conversation,” a special three-part series of the Amplified audioblog. You heard from Sustain podcasters Charisse L'Pree, Megan Goodwin, M.E. Luka, and Sally Chivers, and from Amplify Podcast Network’s co-directors, me, Stacey Copeland and Hannah McGregor. Silently present in this episode was our project assistant and editor, Natalie Dusek. In our next episode we’re diving into the topic of audiences: who are scholarly podcasters making their podcasts for, who are they reaching, and how do they know? In the meantime, make sure to follow us on Twitter aka X, on Instagram, or subscribe to our email newsletter on the website for updates and to keep in touch. Thanks for listening!
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Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay, Ph.D., examines how media affects identity, attitudes and behaviors, and how we use different media to express ourselves and connect with others. Prof. L’Pree has authored two books: “20th Century Media and the American Psyche: A Strange Love” (Routledge, 2021) bridges media theory, psychology and interpersonal communication to describe how our relationships with media emulate the relationships we develop with friends and romantic partners through their ability to replicate intimacy, regularity and reciprocity. “Diversity and Satire: Laughing at Processes of Marginalization” (Wiley, 2023) is the first textbook to explore diversity by demonstrating how satirical content can advance the discussion and change attitudes.
Dr. MaryElizabeth (“M.E.”) Luka is Assistant Professor, Arts & Media Management at University of Toronto, where she examines modes and meanings of co-creative production, distribution and dissemination in the digital age for the arts, media and civic sectors. Dr. Luka is a founding member of the Critical Digital Methods Institute at University of Toronto Scarborough, of research-creation group Narratives in Space + Time Society, and of the technoculture research group, the Fourchettes.
Dr. Megan Goodwin is a scholar of gender, race, sexuality, politics, and American religions. She is the author of Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions (Rutgers 2020). Her next book is tentatively entitled Cults Incorporated: The Business of Bad Religion. She is the founder and co-director of the Bardo Institute for Religion and Public Policy, and the media and tech consultant on the Crossroads Project.
Dr. Sally Chivers is Full Professor of Gender & Social Justice and English at Trent University, where she is a Founding Executive Member and Past Director of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society and recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Research Award. A prolific and sought-after speaker and collaborator, Dr. Chivers writes, speaks, and makes short films about the social and cultural politics of health, aging, and disability. Her monthly podcast Wrinkle Radio fights ageism one story at a time. She has published two books that draw on film and literary analysis to emphasize connections between aging and disability in the public imagination. Her two co-edited collections show that cultural representations influence how we think about aging, long-term care, and disability, and vice versa.
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Links and Resources:
Keeping it 101: A Killjoy’s Guide to Religion
Intro + Outro Theme Music: Pxl Cray – Blue Dot Studios (2016)
Written by Stacey Copeland, Hannah McGregor and Natalie Dusek & produced by Natalie Dusek