Podcast, Radio, Gramophone: Literary Technologies of Sound

Catalog description

How can we account for the contemporary popularity of podcasts? In what ways do they build on, and break from, earlier forms of writing for the ear? In this class we will study innovative podcast fictions like Welcome to Night Vale, Forest 404, and Homecoming together with pathbreaking aural works of the 20th century, from The War of the Worlds to John Cage's Roaratorio and albums by the Firesign Theatre. We will consider the new opportunities and challenges of the podcasting medium, making our own recordings along the way. And we will look at well-known authors - from James Joyce and Dylan Thomas to Ursula Le Guin and Amiri Baraka - who experimented with then-new technologies like the gramophone, radio, audiotape, LP, headphones, the Walkman, and more.