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PODCAST

re:verb

Calvin Pollak and Alex Helberg

re:verb is a podcast about politics, culture, and language in action, featuring interviews and segments from scholars, writers, critics, and activists in the humanities, social sciences, and outside the academy.

news & politics philosophy

All Episodes

00:33:05

E24: re:blurb - Genre

re:verb ·

2019/07/30

In this re:blurb episode, we explore the history and theory of the rhetorical concept of genre. First, we take a tour through the classical genres of forensic, deliberative, and epideictic speech, before moving on to contemporary theories about genres’ profound and complex social functions. In doing so, we describe how genres mediate everyday social interactions through communicative rules and norms, as well as how political power dynamics affect gatekeepers’ decisions about what kinds of practices

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00:50:15

E23: re:joinder - Conservative Rhetorics of Free...

re:verb ·

2019/07/12

On today’s show, we’re getting in the summer spirit by firing up the grill and roasting some more scorching hot bad takes with another installment in our re:joinder series. In this episode, Alex and Calvin dish over two articles that make a similar specious presumption: universities are suppressing freedom of speech, and thus need to be stripped of their funding altogether. Or, at least the humanities disciplines do.The first article comes to us from Quillette, entitled “Federal Funding, the First

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00:48:34

E22: Rhetorics of Labor Organizing & Collective...

re:verb ·

2019/06/27

This week’s show features a discussion about collective action, solidarity, and labor organizing with Penn State English PhD Student and organizer Doug Kulchar. In this conversation, Calvin and Alex talk with Doug about methods of leveraging employee power in workplaces, why bosses and other people in positions of power are often opposed to unions, and Doug’s own experience organizing a graduate student union campaign at Penn State. Through these discussions, we touch on the ways in which concepts

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00:57:47

E21: re:joinder - Why traditional masculinity is bad...

re:verb ·

2019/05/16

*Content Warning* The article referenced in today’s episode includes vague to explicit misogyny and transphobic discourse, as well as references to sexual violence and assault.*Irony Warning* The producers of this podcast disagree with and strongly condemn the argument set forth in the article referenced in this episode. Any intimations to the contrary are entirely a performance for the sake of comedic irony or parody.Today, we introduce a new style of episode called re:joinder, in which we read an

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00:44:54

E20: Stay Skeptical and Don’t Get Murdered: A Genre...

re:verb ·

2019/05/02

On this week’s episode, Alex, Calvin, and Caitlan seek a formal definition of True Crime, identifying the strategies, rhetorical and otherwise, that have elevated the genre and its diverse sub-genres to the realm of cultural obsession. Our hosts discuss what distinguishes True Crime from “untrue” crime shows or other types of “true” content related to crime. They then explore how medium structure, genre features, and various narrative techniques are employed to captivate and motivate consumers of

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00:24:01

E19: re:blurb - The Rhetorical Situation

re:verb ·

2019/04/04

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you just had to say something -- where the words came to you so naturally, they almost felt like they were being dictated by your circumstances? Or, have you ever struggled over how to respond when people around you don’t quite see things the same way you do? In each of these instances, you might’ve been reckoning with a rhetorical situation.In our latest re:blurb mini-episode, Colleen, Calvin, Alex, and Caitlan break down this core concept from

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01:05:40

E18: How do socialist feminists take rhetorical action?

re:verb ·

2019/03/06

If you follow the news, you might have noticed a word coming up more and more frequently: “socialism.” Not only was it name-dropped by the president in his 2019 State of the Union address, but politicians aligning themselves with Democratic Socialism have been winning elections and making headlines, and grassroots socialist organizing has been experiencing a renaissance all over the country. As with many concepts that circulate in news discourse, socialism isn’t something that the media is great at

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00:21:36

E17: re:blurb - Dialogicality

re:verb ·

2019/03/04

On our last episode, Professor John Oddo cited Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in asserting: “When you speak you do not break the eternal silence of the universe. You are not the biblical Adam who is naming and categorizing reality in the virgin world. You are always taking words that taste of prior contexts.”This approach to language as dialogical is the subject of today’s re:blurb. We break down what dialogicality means, how it’s distinct from other theories of language, and how we can

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00:58:30

E16: The Discourse of Propaganda: The myths, the...

re:verb ·

2019/02/12

On this week’s episode, Alex and Calvin chat with Carnegie Mellon Associate Professor of English Dr. John Oddo about his most recent work, The Discourse of Propaganda: Case Studies from the Persian Gulf War and the War on Terror. In the book, Dr. Oddo uses discourse analysis techniques to study U.S. war propaganda. Today’s discussion centers around what makes Oddo’s definition of propaganda unique. He argues that propaganda can best be understood as an intertextual process, and that everyone in U.S

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00:37:04

E15: How can we empower the truth of ordinary people?...

re:verb ·

2018/12/12

What is reality? According to whose version of reality does society function? This week, Alex and Calvin sit down to discuss these and other questions with Dr. Dana L. Cloud, Professor of Rhetoric & Communication and Director of Graduate Studies at Syracuse University, and author of Reality Bites: Assessing Truth Claims in the Time of Trump. In her book, Cloud argues that fact-checking and rational argumentation are not effective persuasion strategies, and she suggests other ways of responding

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00:17:31

E14: re:blurb - Ideographs

re:verb ·

2018/11/30

What comes to mind when you hear words like “freedom,” “justice,” or “liberty”? Whether they conjure feelings of patriotism and pride or just sound like overused, empty buzzwords, rhetoricians call terms like these ideographs – words and phrases that serve as the building blocks of our ideologies and identities.On today’s re:blurb mini-episode, Colleen, Alex, and Calvin break down the history of the ideograph in rhetorical scholarship and demonstrate how it can be a useful concept for analyzing

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00:43:35

E13: How do bodies do rhetorical work? (w/ Dr....

re:verb ·

2018/11/08

*CONTENT WARNING*This episode contains graphic language depicting instances of rape and verbal imagery illustrating acts of sexual violence.On today’s episode, Calvin and Ryan sit down with Dr. Stephanie Larson, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon, to discuss her recent publication in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (QJS), “‘Everything inside me was silenced’: (Re)defining rape through visceral counterpublicity.”This article is part of Professor Larson’s larger body of work on

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00:17:45

E12: re:blurb - Stasis Theory

re:verb ·

2018/10/25

On this week’s show, we change things up a bit and bring you the first in a new series of mini-episodes entitled re:blurb, where we break down concepts from rhetorical theory and history in practical terms and use contemporary examples to illustrate their usefulness in examining language in action.For this first installment, Alex takes the mic to explain stasis theory: a set of concepts reiterated throughout rhetorical history that help speakers and writers both analyze and invent arguments. This

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00:41:38

E11: re:cap (part 2)

re:verb ·

2018/10/10

This week’s episode is the second, concluding part of our series reviewing concepts and topics from last season. (If you haven’t yet listened to part 1, you can find it here.)In part 2 of our re:verb “re:cap,” we rekindle the critical ideas brought up in episodes 6 through 9. First, we build upon our discussion of urban renewal and gentrification from episodes 6 & 7, talking through the ongoing transparency controversy at the heart of Pittsburgh’s “bid” for Amazon HQ2, the economistic frames

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00:41:23

E10: re:cap (part 1)

re:verb ·

2018/09/25

It’s a new academic year, and the beginning of a new season of re:verb! In our 2-part season premiere, we take a retrospective look at topics in political and cultural rhetoric that we’ve covered over the past year, taking note of the critical concepts and questions still pertinent to our thinking. It’s a re:verb “re:cap,” for long-time fans as well as newcomers to the show who want to get a taste of our perspective on language-in-action.In part 1 of our retrospective, Calvin and Alex discuss

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00:56:25

E9: How does language influence our identity (and...

re:verb ·

2018/06/17

Yinz ready for another episode of re:verb? On today’s show, we interview Dr. Barbara Johnstone, professor of English and Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the foremost scholars of an American English dialect known as Pittsburghese.Our conversation touches on the history and features of Pittsburghese, how it has helped to forge various local identities in the city and beyond, and more broadly, how the ways that we talk about language influences our use of language. We discuss

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00:42:48

E8: What can conspiracy theories teach us about how...

re:verb ·

2018/05/29

This week, Alex and Ryan sit down with Dr. Jenny Rice (Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky) and discuss the rhetoric of “alternative researchers” (i.e. conspiracy theorists), particularly how their practices mirror our own as we construct knowledge in our academic and personal lives. In Dr. Rice’s forthcoming book (tentatively titled Awful Archives) she outlines how “archival” practices – broadly defined as the accumulation,

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00:41:55

E7: What are the economic, social, and political...

re:verb ·

2018/05/14

In part two of our series on Rhetorics of Place, Alex and Calvin squeeze into a 5x5 sound booth (reminiscent of a $1,000/month+ studio apartment, or perhaps one floor of a Tiny Home, in a gentrifying Pittsburgh neighborhood) with CMU Master’s Candidate in Literary and Cultural Studies Scott Reiss to talk about the politics of urban development. We map out some of the different social, economic, and political factors in gentrification, and how these are specifically playing out in the city of

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00:55:09

E6: How do spaces and places function in resistance...

re:verb ·

2018/05/05

On this week’s episode, our guests speak with us about how two distinct locations – featuring two billboards – in the city of Pittsburgh played remarkable roles in social movements and controversies over urban spaces. In our first conversation, we speak with Derek Handley (recent Carnegie Mellon Rhetoric PhD. graduate and soon-to-be faculty at Lehigh University) about his study of “Freedom Corner” in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, and how it functioned as a location and a resource for arguments against

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00:49:29

E5: How is science represented on Wikipedia, and why...

re:verb ·

2018/04/19

It’s a real scorcher of an episode this week as Calvin and Alex sit down with re:verb web editor and Carnegie Mellon PhD candidate Ana Cooke to discuss her research on the arguments taking place within Wikipedia articles about global warming. We talk about why Wikipedia is an important space for public knowledge-curation, how certain kinds of language can color our perceptions of the certainty surrounding scientific facts, and how Wikipedia editors found a working solution to manage the ways both

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104 results

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