This is my first draft of my paper project, this paper is mainly about the development of podcasts as a form of digital media. It is also about the way that podcasts have developed as a teaching tool for history and a form of entertainment with historical themes.
Hi Jamie, I really enjoyed reading your paper on podcasts and history. I was entirely surprised/thrilled by the historical context you provided about historians’ previous forays into the world of analog/digital medias. I’ve perceived history-themed/historical podcasts as historians leveraging new digital platforms as a recent phenomenon, rather than a continuation of methods they have leveraged for at least the past century.
I would love to hear more about why you landed on these four podcasts, in particular (though I totally appreciate the range you’ve gone for as I think it helps outline the vastness of the history-podcast landscape). Were these podcasts you already listened to? Those that have the most viewership? In any case, I really look forward to reading your final project!
Hi Jamie, I really enjoyed reading your paper! There are a lot of great things coming together in here.
I really appreciate how you work to situate historians use of podcasts in a longer history of historians engagement and use of radio as a medium. It’s important to build out that connection and that creates a great place to help situate your narrative in a broader body of historical research and scholarship. It may be worth bringing some of that up in your introduction too as it could help lay out your thesis/argument.
I like that you are providing us with both an overview and history of podcasting and a dive into and exploration of a series of history podcasts. At this point you’ve got a great set of material you are working with both for the specific podcasts you are looking at and the secondary literature you are situating this work in.
My biggest suggestion for continuing to work on this paper is to focus in on drawing out your argument and thesis and making it clear up front and returning to it at the end. At this point, the paper has clear sections between the intro, the review of historians and audio and the development of podcasting, your coverage of a series of individual podcasts, and your conclusion section. I think there are opportunities to work to strengthen and unite the narrative and argument across those sections. In that vein, is the story of history podcasts a story of continuity with history on the radio? Or is it a story of discontinuity? There is also a strand of discussion in your paper on the differences between podcasts created by historians and podcasts about history that aren’t created by historians. Is that the main area of argument/focus? If so, how does that tension work in the historical context with things like radio.
So those are some suggestions from me for where you could focus on more. With that said, I should underscore this coming together really well. I think if you were interested in continuing to refine and develop this you have a good bit of material that could be developed into an interesting article for something like the Public Historian.
Jamie,
Reading through your draft has me very excited to see your final product. Great work!
You make a crucial intervention: that podcasts are, in some ways, a continuation of the sorts of traditional mobile media that Farman discusses. Having only ever made one podcast in my life, and being an avid listener myself, I wonder what sort of implications this notion has for listeners? Is listening to a podcast a viable form of scholarly engagement? Your paper raises some really important questions for the field to consider.