English via the Airwaves: Recovering 1930s Radio Pedagogies

RECOVERING 1930s RADIO PEDAGOGIES

Jason Palmeri (Miami University)
Ben McCorkle (The Ohio State University at Marion)

While digital audio composing is often positioned as “experimental” or “new” within the field of composition (Comstock & Hocks 2006; Dangler, McCorkle and Barrow 2007; Jones 2010; Selfe 2009), our contemporary digital audio moment is not the first time that English teachers have become enraptured with new audio technologies. In this scholarly audio essay, we turn our ears back to the last great heyday of sonic writing in the discipline of English: the “golden age” of radio in the 1930s. Drawing primarily from a corpus of texts published in English Journal, we detail what today’s compositionists can learn from recovering 1930s English teachers' experiments with radio production.

 

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Transcript

Tired of listening to us carry on about this and that? Why not read what we have to say instead. MORE

Appendix

Here's a handful of assignment ideas for working with audio production and reception, inspired by voices from the past. MORE

References

Here's a list of the English Journal sources mentioned in the sound essay (plus a few more citations thrown in for good measure). MORE

Production Notes

Find information on the background music, sound effects, and other details associated with this sound essay and web text. MORE
Featuring the Vocal Talents of:
  • cris cheek as Max Herzberg
  • Katie Johnson as Ruth Batten
  • Jonathan Bradshaw as Jay Newlin
  • Catherine Tetz as Bernice Orndorff
  • Katy Shay as Delight Phillips
  • Morgan Leckie as Mildred Campbell
  • John Silvestro as Keith Tyler
  • Ashley Miller as Mildred Carson