Aca-Media Podcast - Aca-Media

We have a special treat for listeners in this episode as DePauw University's Jordan Sjol sits down with acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer José Rivera for a conversation about his journey from playwriting to Hollywood, writing across different media, adapting literary classics, and balancing artistic integrity with commercial demands.

Chris chats with Swapnil Rai about her book on how Bollywood stars transformed Hindi cinema into a global phenomenon, as well as how she uses podcasting activities in her classroom. And if you've got ideas for how students can study media by making media, you're invited to submit a proposal for a symposium at Notre Dame on that very topic.

Aca-Media producer David Lipson was in Paris for the 2024 Olympics/Paralympics, so we sent him out into the field. He captured some sounds of the city and the people flocking to arenas and also turned modern journalism's most essential tool – a smartphone – toward journalists themselves, uncovering the challenges, and a few joys, that unite media professionals across the globe today.

Stephanie Brown delves into the dangerous world of women laughing in this conversation with Maggie Hennefeld about her new book Death By Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema. Covering everything from 19th-century obituaries blaming giggle fits (rather than girdle fits) for women's deaths to the modern-day political power of a vice presidential cackle, we're certain this episode will entertain you … just short of killing you.

We've reached that late post-spring time of year, as Michael judiciously puts it, and if you're lucky and industrious enough to have finished writing something over summer and you'd like to get published, we've got just the roundtable for you! One side of the table features experienced editors and the other side has young scholars with questions, so the end result is an engaging and enlightening discussion about how academic publishing works these days.

O.J. Simpson died on April 10, 2024. Along—and intertwined—with the impact that he had on formations of "law and order," celebrity and scandal, race and gender, class and nation, Simpson had an enormous impact on U.S. television. This episode of "Talking Television" considers that impact, as TV scholars Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, Brandy Monk-Payton, and Samantha Sheppard talk about the televisual construct of "O.J. Simpson" and about media and culture in the wake of "OJ TV."

In this episode of Aca-Media, David Lipson talks with Shawn Glinis and Arlin Golden, the creators of Wiseman Podcast, which is devoted entirely to discussing the films of--you guessed it—Frederick Wiseman. Shawn and Arlin explain how the podcast is produced and why they feel Wiseman should be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick, Coppola, and Scorsese. Also, Chris and Michael banter about an exciting result of a past episode.

Bust out your fancy headphones for this episode, folks. In one our best episodes ever from an audiophilic perspective, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick talks with Jacob Smith about his recent experimental audiobooks, ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene and Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves, both of which are available as open access files on the University of Michigan Press website. Then Chris and Michael chat about the gratification of SCMS volunteering, wish you a happy eclipse, and tout the glories of NCAA women's basketball tournament.

Recorded live on the scene! (so please forgive any less-than-ideal audio quality) Convening at the 2024 SCMS conference in Boston and gathering “after dark” on the conference eve (i.e. after the opening reception and its free bar, which might have made us all a little giddy), Chris and Michael chat with longtime Conference Manager Leslie LeMond and new president Vicky Johnson about what goes into choosing a conference city and what the future may hold, as well as some of the unique challenges the organizing team faced this year (yes, they talked about the awards situation). We then welcome Aniko (Madison friends, update your pronunciation) Bodroghkozy, who tells us about the new Television and Radio History Scholarly Interest Group. And we end with a few suggestions from Michael for sites to see, things to eat, and horrific animal scenes you may encounter while in Boston.

Stephanie Brown chats with Justin Rawlins about his new book on method acting (Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance) and the discourse the method has generated over the years. Meanwhile, Michael tries to channel his inner authentic podcaster and nearly goes full-Leto.

A conversation between Jonathan Nichols-Pethick and Jordan Sjol about Sjol's JCMS article, “A Diachronic, Scale-Flexible, Relational, Perspectival Operation: In Defense of (Always-Reforming) Medium Specificity” and the recent feature film that Sjol co-wrote, How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

We continue on with our coverage of media industry labor, as Stephanie Brown talks with Andrea Ruehlicke about reality TV contestants fighting for fair rights and against exploitative conditions. Then Chris and Michael banter about a drag show and a symposium on drag performance bans held at Notre Dame last month.

What is it like when your area of expertise is suddenly in the news? When the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes began, industry scholars Kate Fortmueller and Miranda Banks suddenly found themselves in demand, fielding dozens of interview requests from a range of news outlets. We talk with them about how they are talking about the strikes with the press and students. Then Chris and Michael banter about Michael's recent appearance on the Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone podcast.

Return with us to our live taping at the SCMS conference in Denver in April 2023 as we talk with outgoing SCMS president Priscilla Peña Ovalle about the past and future of the SCMS conference. What are the hopes and challenges of conferencing for the Society in the post-pandemic world?

We're going to SCMS 2023 in Denver, Colorado! In our latest episode we talk about our plans for SCMS, where we'll be doing a live episode (which is next week at the time of publishing!). We then chat with Finley Freibert of the SCMS Precarious Labor Organization to talk about how things have changed – and not changed – over the last few years. Finally, we bid farewell to our longtime producer, Bill Kirkpatrick, who has joined the Sociology department at the University of Winnipeg.

Our latest episode is a fascinating deep dive into the practice, politics, and promise of improv comedy. Diana De Pasquale leads you on a tour, talking with four different practitioners of improv on what improv means today, especially to marginalized people. For example, is the famous improv mantra of “Yes, and …” perhaps in need of revision?

In this episode of Aca-Media, we bring you the editors and several authors of the collection Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation. This fascinating discussion explores the intersections of food and media (as well as food studies and media studies), the changing landscape of social media, and the cultural politics of “food porn.” Featuring Emily J.H. Contois, Zenia Kish, KC Hysmith, Sarah Tracy, Tara Schuwerk, and Michael Newman.

In this episode we bring you a deep dive into the world of the right-wing comedy complex, from the hyper-visible Joe Rogan to the subterranean shows, circuits, and celebrities you may never have heard of, but whose success represents a crucial political development. Stephanie Brown talks with Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx about their new book That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them.

The ninth episode of “Presenting the Past” features Judy Woodruff, anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour, and Annette Miller, former Vice President of NewsHour Productions. The PBS NewsHour Collection in the AAPB includes nearly 15,000 episodes from October 1975 to September 2019, including two half-hour predecessor programs, The Robert MacNeil Report (1975-1976) and The MacNeil/Lehrer Report (1976 – 1983), and the two hour-long series that followed, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (1983 – 1995) and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (1995 – 2009), in addition to the PBS NewsHour (2009 - 2019). The programs originally aired nationwide on public television stations, five nights a week; starting in 2013, the series added weekend news coverage. Covering national and worldwide news and public affairs, the programs feature interviews with leading newsmakers including presidents, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, secretaries of state, and world leaders, in addition to coverage of issues in the news related to education, economics, science, health, and cultural affairs. Funding for the digitization of the collection was generously provided by the Council on Library and Information Resources.In this episode, Woodruff and Miller talk about the NewsHour's history and their careers working on the series.

The eighth episode of “Presenting the Past” features John L. Hanson, Jr., producer and host since 1981 of the nationally syndicated radio and podcast interview series In Black America at KUT Radio in Austin, Texas. In 2019, KUT received a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to digitize, preserve and make available in the AAPB 745 episodes of the series. In Black America, which began in 1970 and continues to be broadcast weekly, features hundreds of interviews with influential members of the black community in conversation about issues and topics pertaining to Black America, including education, style, economics, social issues, families, culture, literature, and politics. In this episode, Hanson talks about his long career in radio and his work as producer and host of the series.

It's the film studies textbook you've been waiting for: Cinema is a Cat, which teaches film theory, language, and history using examples of cats in movies. Frank Mondelli talks with author Daisuke Miyao about the book, its inspiration, some of his favorite movie cats, and what dogs might have to say about all this.

In this episode, we conduct an “exit interview” with the outgoing president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Paula Massood, who discusses the downs and ups of her time leading the Society during a global pandemic. Before and after the interview, Chris and Michael discuss the decision to move the 2022 SCMS conference online. It might feel like Groundhog Day, but we've got you, babe.

The seventh episode of “Presenting the Past” features Jean Walkinshaw, an award-winning documentarian and producer in the Pacific Northwest for over 50 years. In 2021, Walkinshaw contributed 44 public television documentaries and full interviews conducted for the documentaries to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). The Jean Walkinshaw Collection accessible online covers much of Walkinshaw's lengthy career spanning the years 1972-2008. Her documentaries focused primarily on notable artists, writers, and social, cultural and ecological themes of the Pacific Northwest region.In this episode, Jean guides listeners through her career and filmmaking process, highlighting titles in her collection available in the AAPB.

The sixth episode of our special series "Presenting the Past," a collaboration between The American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Aca-Media, features Bill Siemering, a radio innovator and advocate, who was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in October 2021. As a founding member of the NPR Board of Directors, Siemering wrote NPR's original mission and goals, and as NPR's first director of programming, led the development of All Things Considered. Siemering developed Fresh Air with Terry Gross at WHYY in Philadelphia, managed WBFO in Buffalo, NY, and KCCM in Moorhead, MN, was the executive producer of the documentary series Sound Print, worked with the Open Society Foundation, focusing on Eastern Europe, Africa and Mongolia, and founded Developing Radio Partners to enrich the programming of local stations in Africa. In this discussion, he reflects on the influences that helped shape his ideas and approaches to public radio programming throughout his career.Highlighted in this program are clips from Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), including the inaugural FM broadcast in 1947, the Peabody Award winning series Afield with Ranger Mac, and the write-in radio program Dear Sirs. Be sure to also listen to “Strasburg, North Dakota” (1977) from Minnesota Public Radio. Co-produced by Siemering, it highlights his interest in incorporating soundscapes and compelling storytelling into radio programming. This discussion is led by Neil Verma, assistant professor of sound studies in Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, and a member of the AAPB Scholar Advisory Committee. Credits:Hosted by Neil VermaRecorded and edited by Christine BeckerProduced by Ryn MarchesePost-production and theme music by Todd Thompson

What happens when communication scholars confront professional liars? The answer is weirder than you might think. In this episode, we talk with Drew Zolides, who organized a silent protest of right-wing propagandist Lara Logan when she spoke at his university and ended up getting pulled into her performance in unexpected ways.

The collaboration between Aca-Media and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting continues with episode 5 of our special series “Presenting the Past: Exploring the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.” This is Part 2 of our two-part episode on Latino Empowerment through Latino Broadcasting.The fifth episode of “Presenting the Past” explores the history of Spanish language public radio and television programming and its roots in community activism. The discussion features activists Hugo Morales, Executive Director and co-founder of Radio Bilingüe Inc., and Jesús Treviño, television director, author and creator of Latinopia.com, along with scholars Dolores Inés Casillas, Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Gabriela Rivera Marín, a doctoral student at the University of Florida studying Hispanic Linguistics and co-curator of the AAPB Latino Empowerment through Latino Public Broadcasting exhibit.To visit the exhibit on the AAPB website, go to https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/latino-empowerment.

The collaboration between Aca-Media and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting continues with episode 5 of our special series “Presenting the Past: Exploring the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.” This is Part 1 of our two-part episode on Latino Empowerment through Latino Broadcasting.The fifth episode of “Presenting the Past” explores the history of Spanish language public radio and television programming and its roots in community activism. The discussion features activists Hugo Morales, Executive Director and co-founder of Radio Bilingüe Inc., and Jesús Treviño, television director, author and creator of Latinopia.com, along with scholars Dolores Inés Casillas, Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Gabriela Rivera Marín, a doctoral student at the University of Florida studying Hispanic Linguistics and co-curator of the AAPB Latino Empowerment through Latino Public Broadcasting exhibit.To visit the exhibit on the AAPB website, go to https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/latino-empowerment.

We're back with a great bleeping episode! First, we interview Dmitri Latsis, head of SCMS's Scholarly Interest Group Coordinating Committee about the role of SIGs within the Society. Then we take on Rolling Stone's list of “100 Best Sitcoms of All Time” with an all-star roundtable of comedy scholars that is even more entertaining than the sitcoms they are talking about. And Chris and Michael banter about pretty much every bleeping thing you can think of.

This episode of “Presenting the Past” features Newton Minow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President John F. Kennedy from 1961 until 1963. Minow would become a key figure in the establishment of public broadcasting in the U.S., and in this conversation, he reflects on his early vision for public service television. Highlighted in this program are clips from the AAPB collection, including Minow's famed “vast wasteland” speech to the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961, his lesser known address to the same organization the following year, as well as a panel discussion with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on the role of television in society.Joining the discussion is Mr. Minow's daughter, Mary Minow, Presidential Appointee to the National Museum and Library Services Board at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and current member of the AAPB Executive Advisory Council.

Since May 2020, Aca-Media has been bringing you a special series, “Talking Television a Time of Crisis,” organized by Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, and Brandy Monk-Payton and featuring dozens of prominent academics and practitioners. These sixteen episodes over two seasons have helped us understand the relationship of TV Studies to, first, the COVID-19 pandemic, and then, following the murder of George Floyd, the struggle for racial justice in the context of multiple crises of political legitimacy, climate emergency, and more. In this finale, the organizers reflect on the series as a whole and offer their take-aways from this extraordinary series of podcasts.

In the third episode of "Presenting the Past," Shirley Sneve, Vice President of Broadcasting for Indian Country Today, reflects on her work with Indian Country Today, Vision Maker Media (VMM), and archiving with the AAPB. Sneve also comments on the history of Native American public broadcasting and presents excerpts from a few of the documentaries that VMM has supported that present a diversity of perspectives on traditional and contemporary Native American culture.

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with episode 15: Academics. How have the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice affected academia, and how might they force a reimagination of the role of television studies inside and outside the academy?

Our special series "Talking Television in a Time of Crisis" continues with Episode 14: Ethics. What ethical practices should television employ in depicting and framing the pandemic and struggles for racial justice? And moving forward, what are the ethical responsibilities of audiences?Host: Taylor Nygaard [Arizona State University]Participants:Heather Hendershot [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]Jorie Lagerwey [University College Dublin]Taylor Nygaard [Arizona State University]Yoruba Richen [Documentarian]Rebecca Wanzo [Washington University in St. Louis]Khadijah Costley White [Rutgers University)

Aca-Media is back with a fascinating conversation about the great Faye Emerson, actress, talk-show host, proto-feminist, and bon vivant. She was once known as “The First Lady of Television” but is now all-too forgotten. Chris talks with media scholar Maureen Mauk and archivist Mary Huelsbeck about Emerson's remarkable life and career, the Emerson collection at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research, and the joys of archival research into film and television's past.In the banter, Chris and Michael discuss ways that YOU can get involved with Aca-Media, including a new segment: “Ask a Cinematologist.” We even have a jingle!

This is the second episode of our special series, “Presenting the Past,” a collaboration with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. We talk with broadcast historian Allison Perlman about the AAPB special exhibit "On the Right: NET and Modern Conservatism" and the state of conservative movement in the 1960s. What challenges did conservatives face following World War II and the defeat of Barry Goldwater? What were the debates and fault lines within the movement? And how did public media try to make sense of the conservative movement in this period when its future was unclear?Link to this episode and show notes: www.aca-media.org/aapb#ep2Link to the AAPB special collection "On the Right: NET and Modern Conservatism": https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/conservatism

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with episode 13: Publics. What new viewing publics have been created over the past year? How have such TV publics both connected and disconnected us, particularly in these times of media bubbles, and with what effects?Hear the conversation with:Hannah Hamad [Cardiff University]Charlotte Howell [Boston University]Rahul Muhkerjee [University of Pennsylvania]Swapnil Rai [University of Michigan]Mel Stanfill [University of Central Florida]

In the first episode of “Presenting the Past,” a new special series from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Aca-Media, film scholar Michelle Kelley highlights a collection of 127 unedited interviews conducted for the landmark PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, first broadcast in January 1987. Kelley provides context for the making of the series and explores examples of interviews that give different, yet valuable, perspectives on the civil rights movement than the one presented in the final cut of the series.

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with Ep. 12: Aesthetics. Questions include: How is television transforming aesthetically, and what new developments in TV form and style have emerged in this time of crisis? How have new forms of television changed our relationship to the TV image?Featuring:Josie Torres Barth [North Carolina State University]Elana Levine [University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee]Yael Levy [Northwestern University]Jason Mittell [Middlebury College]Isabel Pinedo [Hunter College/CUNY]Nick Salvato [Cornell University]

This episode features a Fan Studies Roundtable: what can Fan Studies tell us about our current political and cultural moment, and what is the state of Fan Studies within the discipline today? Then we bring you interviews with two more SCMS 2020 award winners, Rachel Webb Jekanowski (Best Dissertation) and Pansy Duncan (the Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award). Finally, Chris and Michael banter about what they are watching, while Michael denies being a cat and/or French.

Episode 11 of our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” is here: Optics. How does television seek to manage social and political crises around the world? How does television manage its own internal crises (of representation and of legitimation) in such a precarious cultural moment and climate of unrest?This conversation is hosted by Mimi White (Northwestern University) and features Eva Hageman (University of Maryland College Park), Darnell Hunt (UCLA), Melissa Phruksachart (University of Michigan), and Brenda Weber (Indiana University).This episode is dedicated to the late Jane Feuer

Episode 10 of our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” is here: Economics. How has the business of television, from streaming to legacy media, changed in 2020? How can we rethink notions of value in the industry that might contest capitalist modes of production and consumption? Hosting is Miranda Banks (Loyola Marymount University), and our guest scholars for this episode are Sarah Banet-Weiser (London School of Economics), Melanie Kohnen (Lewis and Clark College), Al Martin (University of Iowa), and Alisa Perren (University of Texas, Austin).

Our special series “Talking Television” is back for a second season, now as “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis”! In this second episode, we discuss tactics: How can we best analyze and address the power of television, particularly in times of crisis and controversy? How might we define a televisual activism—or is that a contradiction in terms?Guest Scholars: Jonathan Gray (University of Wisconsin—Madison); Daniel Marcus (Goucher College); Quinn Miller (University of Oregon); Eve Ng (Ohio University); Samantha Sheppard (Cornell University)

Aca-Media is back with a series of fascinating conversations. First, we talk with Cara Dickason about her work on surveillance and teen girl media, the Graduate Student Organization and the Precarious Labor Organization, SCMS+, and more. Then we talk with two 2020 SCMS Award winners: Jinsook Kim, who won the Student Writing Award, and Allison Whitney, who won the Distinguished Pedagogy Award.

Our special series “Talking Television in a Pandemic” is back for a second season! In this episode we discuss how television manages, amplifies, and contains our collective anxieties about the election and about other political issues, and we ask: How can we best use television to promote democratic aims? Guest Scholars: Matt Delmont [Dartmouth College], Sarah Kessler [University of Southern California], Kayti Lausch [University of Michigan], Roopali Mukherjee [Queens College], Susan Ohmer [University of Notre Dame]

As we head into this weird and dangerous fall, we bring you one of the most important episodes of Aca-Media ever: a panel on organizing the academic workplace. How do we collectively organize within and outside of unions for improvements in labor conditions, compensation, and faculty governance? What tactics should we pursuing, and what difficulties should we expect? With Yulia Gilich, Rebecca Gordon, Chris Robé, Jamie Ann Rogers, and Ben Stork.

The organizers of the ”Talking Television in a Pandemic" series reflect on the previous six episodes, summarize key take-aways from these conversations, and look ahead to the coming months. With Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, and Brandy Monk-Payton.

Our special series “Talking Television in a Pandemic” continues with a bonus sixth episode! What can non-North American perspectives teach us about television’s negotiation between the local and the global, both during the global pandemic and amidst global protest movements for liberation and racial justice? Guest scholars: Chris Becker, Liz Giuffre, Misha Kavka, Jinying Li, Jeff Scheible, and Fracesca Sobande

How do we teach TV today? What issues are emerging at this moment in the classroom? How has the social context and the virtualization of everyday life shifted the ways in which we reflect on and teach media? What can we do to support the mental and physical health of our students and colleagues, and how might that tie to media themselves? What can we do to ensure that our discipline is supported by university administrators in a time of so much uncertainty about the future of higher education? Guest scholars: Bambi Haggins, Julia Himberg, Derek Kompare, Jacinta Yanders Host: Julie Levin Russo

How are old and new technologies impacting TV production, textuality, and reception? What possibilities are emerging, and what might be closing down? How does this impact media industries and/or media audiences? How do discourses of technology overlap and interact with discourses around the pandemic as well as the protests, and what might we make of that? In other words, how does the idea of “virality” resonate with televisual/video technologies in all of their forms?

What are the primary affects around and through TV consumption? How has the pandemic (and the protests following the murder of George Floyd) affected the ways in which we consume and critique television? What are our embodied viewing experiences as audiences trapped at home, and how might these experiences speak to new ways of perceiving and understanding TV? What can we learn from existing fan cultures about spectatorial engagement in this time? How has the pandemic affected our collective notions of comfort and discomfort, and how does this shake out across modes of distribution, genre, and style? Guest Scholars: Hollis Griffin, Suzanne Scott, Karen Tongson, Kristen Warner; Host: Hunter Hargraves NOTE: Some episodes of this series were recorded before the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020—when a white police officer pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while Floyd struggled for his life—and before the protests that broke out around the country and the world condemning that despicable murder and, more broadly, police brutality and systemic racial injustice. Racism too is a pandemic—one that intersects with the COVID-19 pandemic, with African Americans at higher risk of the Coronavirus because of centuries of health, employment, and social disparities. The horrific inequalities in the economic and criminal "justice" systems—and, of course, in the media—highlight how racism itself poses an ongoing public health crisis. In the wake of this murder—along with the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others—we have thus broadened the podcast conversations to include discussion of television's relation to racism, injustice, oppressive policing and policies (and the protests against these) together with discussion of television's relation to COVID-19, as considering these pandemics together is, we believe, critical to understanding the state of our world and the media today.

What are the relations between televisual politics and aesthetics, identity and representation, communication and critique? How has the pandemic renewed interest in conversations around TV’s modes of address and how viewers make meaning from particular kinds of programming content? At a time when fraught politics are, one might say, on the very surface of texts today, how should we best deploy and/or aim to transform ideological analysis? This episode includes a special discussion of ideology in relation to the protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.