By Amplify Network Date: September 18, 2023 Tags: Podcasting, Open Access

We are excited to Welcome our Inaugural Sustain Stream Cohort!

In Spring 2023 Amplify Podcast Network put out its first proposal invite for new podcasts to join our Sustain stream (non-peer reviewed). The Editorial Board was blown away by the number and quality of the proposals we received in our very first round, and thrilled for what this enthusiasm says about the growth of scholarly podcasting. 

The four podcasts in our 2023/2024 Cohort are: Wrinkle Radio, Critical & Curious, Keeping it 101: A Killjoy’s Guide to Religion, and Critical Technology – A KDMI Podcast. Read more about and find links to each of the Sustain podcasts below!

Wrinkle Radio

Don’t panic! It’s just aging. At Wrinkle Radio, the stories we tell about aging matter. We don’t fight aging, but we do fight the forces that make aging worse for some people than for others. We fight the forces that tell us that we need to grow old in a certain way. We fight the forces that tell us we have to fear aging. Join host Sally Chivers as we learn and celebrate along the way. —> Listen Here

Meet Sally Chivers: Full Professor at Trent University’s Centre for Aging & Society, Sally Chivers writes, speaks, teaches, and podcasts about the social and cultural politics of health, aging, and disability. Author and co-editor of 4 books, most notably The Silvering Screen, her academic writing emphasizes connections between aging and disability in the public imagination and shows how cultural representations change the way we think about those topics. She is always looking for the hidden or ignored contributions of older adults, especially those who too often get pushed outside the frame–and to push back against that framing.

Critical & Curious

We’ll give you the language for why you love trash. Layering academic research and theory over popular culture and industry is essential to expanding scholarship and the core of Critical and Curious, an educational podcast hosted by two professors at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. The podcast was originally conceptualized as an undergraduate diversity course investigating the Fast and Furious franchise, but has since evolved into a “pop trash podcast” exploring cultural artifacts that have been largely discarded by academics, including a star study of Keanu Reeves and postmodern interpretations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Each season connects popular culture with larger issues of social representation regarding issues of race, gender, socioeconomic class, sexuality, ability, and national identity across seasons that centers critical studies methodology as a means of discussion social justice, critical pedagogy, and media literacy. —> Listen Here

Meet Charisse & Bob: Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay is an Associate Professor of Communications at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and the Newhouse Endowed Chair for Public Communications. Charisse investigates how users think about themselves and others via media through psychology and critical studies. She is the author of two books and dozens of book chapters and academic articles. ——-> Robert J. Thompson is the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University where he is also the Trustee Professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He lectures across the country on the subjects of television and popular culture and has been featured in hundreds of radio and TV programs and publications.

Keeping it 101: A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion

Because even if you’re done with religion, religion isn’t done with you. Keeping It 101: a Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion is cohosted & coproduced by Drs. Megan Goodwin and Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst. Why religion? Well, if you read the news, have a body, exist in public, or think about race, gender, class, ability, or sexuality, you likely also think about religion — even if you don’t know it yet. Let us show you why religion is both a lot more important and a little easier to understand than you might think. –> Listen Here

Meet Megan and Llyse: Megan writes, teaches, and rants about all things American religion, race, gender, and politics; Ilyse rants, teaches, and writes about all things Islam, South Asia, imperialism, race and religion. They are friends-who-are-family who met when the graduate director had Ilyse sleep on Megan’s floor before entering the same PhD program at UNC-Chapel Hill, made each other laugh while talking in pronounced Tristate (NY-NJ-PA) accents, and haven’t stopped trying to teach & figure out how religion shapes our daily lives–even if we don’t really want or expect it to.

Critical Technology

Conversations from the frontlines and behind the scenes of sociotechnical research. Critical Technology explores new and emerging research into the social, cultural, and political implications of new/recent technological developments, in the form of one-on-one interviews with the researchers and authors of the studies themselves. The podcast launched in 2020 as a knowledge mobilization initiative of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI), a cross-departmental research institute housed in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.  Originally created and hosted by the KMDI’s Director Dr. Sara Grimes, for the forthcoming 2024 season, we join new host Dr. M.E. Luka to delve into the theme of methods: dirty methods, transgressive methods, critical methods, collaborative methods, compassionate methods, and the ethics of methods. —> Listen Here

Meet M.E.: Dr. Mary Elizabeth (M.E.) Luka is Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, examining modes and meanings of co-creative production and distribution in the digital age for arts, culture, and media. Luka is a founding member of the UTSC Critical Digital Methods Institute where they host several open access resources. These include the Artifex repository of 400 items, and the Creative Hubs and Networks database, for creative workers in Canada. Luka is currently completing the monograph, The First TV Shows on the Internet: How Canada Broke Ground and Lost the Race for Arts and Variety Programming Online, for Concordia University Press.

About The Sustain Stream

The Sustain stream and our network at large is committed to anti-racism, feminist social justice, and community-building. Podcasts selected for inclusion in the network are based on our guiding editorial values: commitment to critical pedagogy and open scholarship. We aim to uphold these values as we continue to build our Amplify community. The podcasts in the Sustain stream are not peer reviewed and do not carry the imprint of WLU Press. For inquiries about the Resonate stream, please contact WLU Press senior editor Siobhan McMenemy. 

Keep an eye out in 2024 for our next Sustain Stream CFP and subscribe to our mailing list on the homepage to stay informed!