Podcasts, Serial and the Sociological Imagination

• In Event: 038 - Theory Section Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 08. Production of Cultural Objects

Abstract

It might be argued that one of the most important cultural objects of 2014 was the podcast Serial. In case you have been out of office for a while, Serial (a spinoff from the creators of Chicago’s WBEZ podcast This American Life) Serial appeared in listeners’ RSS feed on October 21, 2014. It is not only podcasts like Serial that have captured the sociological imagination and recent scholarship has shown, that when podcasts in general are integrated as part of classroom instruction, student engagement and enjoyment increases (Peden and Domask, 2011; Moryl and Jiang, 2013; Choi et al. 2015). The literature shows that student-created podcasts have been successful in showcasing students’ understanding of difficult economic concepts (Morly and Jiang 2013). This paper explores my own classroom experience with first-year students in the intro to sociology classroom, podcasts may pave the way to the finding of a social voice—one that conveys authority, while at the same time a level of intimacy over the tellings of their own lives. In their article on the myriad ways podcasts can be used in the classroom, Durrani et al. (2015) give a stark reminder that the academic voice tends to be objective and impersonal sometimes giving precedence to so-called value-neutral endeavors over personal voice. Here I recount how podcasts can be a successful tool in the classroom as well as a way to engage scholarship with students who are looking for nontraditional ways to convey their knowledge.

Author

• Andrea D. Miller, Webster University