Humanities Podcasting Lunch - WashU Graduate Students

WashU graduate students for all disciplines are welcome. We’ll discuss the landscape of academic podcasting for listeners, teachers, and creators alike. And you’ll also hear from WashU grad students about their own podcasting innovations! Earlier this year, graduate students in the humanities had an exciting opportunity to enhance their professional portfolio with a winter virtual podcasting institute led by the National Humanities Center: Podcasting the Humanities: Creating Digital Stories for the Public. The Graduate Student Podcasting Winter Institute is an annual five-day virtual program that trains PhD students how to design, record, and share a full podcast that applies their humanistic skills to a topic of public interest. The Office of Graduate Studies and the Center for the Humanities co-sponsored several graduate students to participate in this annual institute, and now invites them to share their insights gained during the experience.

Registration required

A sneak preview of what these podcasters learned:

Ruochen Chen (History): I did not believe that I would be able to make podcasts on my own by taking a five-day crash course. I do now. The hands-on experience and the close-knit atmosphere in group work were an invaluable compeller. I am now using the skills I learnt in making some introductory podcasts for a course that I intend to teach in the History Department. In an age when the humanities are in crisis, it might be imperative that we scholars adopt some latest technologies in disseminating knowledge and conveying the value of our subjects to attract the largest potential audience. 

Franzi Finkenstein (German) I applied for the “Podcasting Institute” due to various reasons. First, I wished to refine my technical skills in terms of recording and editing with professional equipment. Secondly, I was curious about how the NHC would teach us about alternative methods and media of knowledge production that are underrepresented in academia. Thirdly, I was looking forward to working in collaboration with other students from other or adjacent fields and create something together that would contribute to culturally relevant discourses. The product of this tense “Podcasting Institute” (5 days 7-8 hours/day) is a 23 minutes long conversation between me (German & WGSS), Savannah (Rhetorics), Samaria (Religion, AFAS), Tomi (Bio Ethics)  “On The Womb” which deals with the multiperspectivity and the struggles of having a womb in today’s post-Dobbs climate.

Anastasia Sorochinsky (English): I was eager to participate in the Humanities Podcasting Institute because of my interest in the crossover between academic topics and cultural conversations, and I continue to be particularly fascinated by those channels in which these kinds of dialogues emerge and take place. The Podcasting Institute provided not only such a venue, but also excellent coverage of the technical skills and equipment required to create and participate in podcasting. It was also very generative to be able to speak with people across disciplines and institutional positions, and I look forward to using the skillset I developed to put a podcast out into the world!

Learn more at the lunch and meet your fellow podcast enthusiasts!