SpokenWeb Podcasting as Scholarly Feminist Practice

Known for their seriality as well as their ability to provide people the freedom to vocalize their thoughts and to directly reach a public, podcasts have changed the way we listen to media since the beginning of the 21st century. While there is a plethora of podcasts available to listeners that are informed by diverse interests such as literature, sports, food, travel, and tabletop role-playing games, what happens when podcast production is deployed as a feminist practice? In her work on feminist podcasting, podcaster Hannah McGregor claims that for her podcasting can be a “fundamentally feminist research method: research not just as and through creation, but research as and through collaborative co-creation with other feminist thinkers” (“Podcasting as Feminist Method”; [McGregor’s work informs this post’s title]). Similarly, podcaster Stacey Copeland argues, the “amplified voice through podcasting as an intimate aural medium carries with it the possibilities for a deep affective experience for both the creator and the listener” (209). Podcasts such as Secret Feminist Agenda, The SpokenWeb Podcast, and SoundBox Signals, which are hosted by academics and address feminist issues in the everyday life and Canadian literary audio, respectively, “materialize the feminist voice” (Copeland 209) and generate feminist dialogue across soundwaves. For instance, in the recent crossover episode of Secret Feminist Agenda and The SpokenWeb Podcast, a podcast about Canadian literary audio, collaborators McGregor and Copeland discuss queer media production, intergenerational feminism, women’s voice, and Copeland’s podcast research. With the most recent episode in mind, I consider throughout this post the ways in which specific episodes of The SpokwenWeb Podcast and SoundBox Signals (co-produced by Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam) foreground women’s voices. As I suggest, both SpokenWeb-affiliated podcasts discuss literary audio recordings in ways that make audible women writers’ work, develop feminist kinships, vocalize invisible labour, and facilitate the formation of listening communities. By examining these episodes, I argue that these podcasts have served a feminist function within Canadian literary criticism because they valorize the contributions of the often-invisible workers participating in the production, documentation, and dissemination of Canadian literature.

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