Podcasts in rhetoric and composition: A review of The Big Rhetorical Podcast and Pedagogue

Abstract

In the last decade, scholar-podcasters have made a case for podcasts as valuable contributions to academic and public discourse, including in rhetoric and composition. Research in multimodality and advances in technology over the past twenty years have allowed rhetoricians and compositionists to develop and (re)imagine ways for making, producing, and distributing knowledge. This review suggests podcasts and podcasting help us do some of the things we value in rhetoric and composition. For example, some recurring themes in rhetoric and writing studies research over the last decade include social justice, antiracism, inclusivity, equity, multimodality, collaboration, and accessibility, to name a few throughlines in scholarship. The Big Rhetorical Podcast and Pedagogue are sites where these disciplinary values are heard. This review suggests that podcasts have the potentiality to do some of the things traditional scholarship has had difficulties rectifying and emphasizes podcasting is a valuable form of knowledge circulation in rhetoric, composition, and adjacent fields. This review seeks to legitimize podcasts as scholarship. One aim was to suggest how podcasts in rhetoric and composition complement values in writing studies and offer new ways of producing and distributing knowledge that reach wider audiences and that have potential to center equity in the field.