Workshop Leaders
Eric Detweiler, Middle Tennessee State University
Rosa Eberly, Penn State University
Jennifer Isasi, Penn State University
Karrieann Soto Vega, University of Kentucky
This workshop provides a collaborative space for scholars working in rhetorical theory, sound studies, and archives to discuss rhetorical approaches to character and to play with polyphonic archives (e.g., Puerto Rican nationalist and decolonial sonic archives that highlight conceptions of identity and character; voice actor and satirist Harry Shearer’s radio program/podcast, Le Show; other influential podcasts including Code Switch, In the Dark, and Everything is Alive that feature different approaches to sonic character; and international LGBTQ+ radio program/podcast This Way Out). The workshop will begin with three ancient western conceptions of character — ethos, tropos, and xarakter — and investigate their possibilities and limitations as theoretical points of departure for studying and describing different iterations of character in sound across time. The workshop will welcome additional ways of thinking about sound character(s), with special emphasis on the dynamics/problematics of voicing or lip-synching characters across race, sex, and other elements of identity. The workshop will be divided between discussions of an interdisciplinary reading/listening list (40 percent) and small-group workshops of participants’ projects (60 percent). In service of an ethical and accessible workshop, all participants will be asked to commit to best practices of accessibility in their presentations and other materials. The problematics of accessibility in the context of sonic/audio artifacts and data will thus be an additional topic of discussion. The challenge of ephemerality, technological change, and other obstacles to preservation and study of voices and other sounds will constitute the last major constellation of concepts in this workshop; we will encourage participants to think about the materiality as well as the ephemerality of their research and teaching, the powers of close listening, and what data or “listening at a distance” might miss.
Note: This workshop has limited space for remote participation.
Dr. Karrieann Soto Vega is Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky, where she is also affiliated with the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as the Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies Program. Her research revolves around Puerto Rican nationalism and decolonial feminist rhetoric, particularly through the figure of Lolita Lebrón and in contemporary artistic activism.
Dr. Eric Detweiler directs the public writing and rhetoric program and is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University. He studies and teaches courses on podcasting, rhetorical theory, and digital rhetoric, and is the author of the book Responsible Pedagogy: Moving Beyond Authority and Mastery in Higher Education.
Dr. Rosa Eberly, a free-range rhetorician, is Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the departments of Communication Arts & Sciences and English at Penn State. The author of Towers of Rhetoric: Memory and Reinvention and Citizen Critics: Literary Public Spheres, she co-edited A Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy and the Sage Handbook of Rhetoric.
Dr. Jennifer Isasi, Assistant Research Professor of Digital Scholarship at Penn State, is Assistant Director of the Office of Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship and Director of the Digital Liberal Arts Research Initiative. Isasi’s dissertation, “Data Mining Possibilities for the Analysis of the Literary Character in the Spanish Novel: The Case of Galdós and the Episodios nacionales,” established a computational reading methodology to extract, analyze and visualize literary character-systems or social networks, noting how they reflect novel genres and degrees of historicity that replicate close readings of the novels.