{"id":61,"date":"2015-08-03T14:21:21","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T19:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/?page_id=61"},"modified":"2015-08-05T16:03:17","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T21:03:17","slug":"personal-belief-podcast","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/assignments\/personal-belief-podcast\/","title":{"rendered":"personal belief podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Length<\/strong>: \u00a03 to 5 minutes of audio<\/p>\n

Due dates<\/strong>: \u00a08.4 (proposal), 8.5 (script draft), 8.10 (final recorded version<\/em>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where the manifesto was a lashing out, a noisy and confident assertion of principles against the weight of injustice and apathy, the personal belief podcast channels a quieter, more meditative kind of voice. \u00a0As we have discussed in class, belief is how we mediate the relationship between ourselves, the world we live in, and the experiences we absorb and bear witness to. \u00a0To believe is not merely to have an argument for something or to suspect something of being true; it entails a complex, personal relationship between the believer and the thing believed. \u00a0We form our beliefs not in some abstract vacuum\u00a0of decontextualized human reasoning, but in the context of our experiences, our backgrounds, our memories, our feelings, our friends and family, our own position in the world. \u00a0To say that we believe in something, in other words, is to both establish and perform a complicated relationship between ourselves and the belief we’re claiming; to talk about belief is not just to talk about a\u00a0thing one imagines to be true, but rather to explore the ways we came to adopt a belief, the role it has played in our lives, the way it has subsequently reshaped our experiences.<\/p>\n

This is to say, in part, that a personal belief essay or podcast should feel very different from a garden variety argument essay. \u00a0This is not about marshaling a case on behalf of the thing you believe in: \u00a0here are the top five reasons why you should believe in fairness, or here’s the evidence in favor of belief in the American dream, etc. \u00a0Rather, what you’re\u00a0after here is an exploration of the full contours of some belief that holds a prominent place in your life\u2014not just its logical merits, but the personal circumstances out of which that belief emerged for you, and the ins and outs of your relationship with it. \u00a0By exploring belief in this way, we let ourselves think more honestly and fully about why we believe what we believe\u2014and, by extension, why others might come to believe something different. \u00a0In this way, the articulation of personal belief is implicitly an act of empathy: \u00a0by thinking about all the factors that led us to this particular belief, we pay heed to all the factors that might lead someone to beliefs that differ from or even contradict our own. \u00a0This gets us out of the tunnel vision through which our beliefs become the only conceivable ones (and through which we dismiss everyone\u00a0who believes otherwise as crazy, stupid, or evil).<\/p>\n

Channeling but not necessarily replicating NPR’s “This I Believe” series<\/a>, your task is to narrate some particular belief\u2014belief\u00a0in,\u00a0<\/em>not just belief\u00a0that<\/em>\u2014in terms not only of the content or importance of that belief but also your own relationship to it. \u00a0How did you come to believe in this thing? \u00a0What did you believe in before? \u00a0How did circumstances outside yourself shape that belief? \u00a0How has that belief in turn shaped aspects of your life? \u00a0How has your relationship to that belief changed over time? \u00a0Though this is a subgenre of personal narrative, it is important that your writing\u00a0be not only expressive but clear and articulate in the way it makes legible your experiences, your belief, and the relationship between the two.<\/p>\n

Note, too, that the final product here is not a written document but an audio recording: \u00a0this time, we’re taking voice literally. \u00a0You will of course write a script for yourself, which is what we will workshop in class, but the script should be written specifically with spoken delivery in mind. \u00a0Writing for the page is significantly different from writing for spoken delivery; as you write, you should be reading your sentences aloud, seeing how they sound off the page, making tweaks based on the way they sound to the ear or how awkward they are when spoken aloud. \u00a0You should also, maybe needless to say, be thoughtful and careful in the way you deliver your essay when you record it. \u00a0The impact of the content here is inseparable from the impact of the form, the style, the delivery, the tone of voice: \u00a0a listener won’t necessarily have the text of your essay in front of them, which means you need to take advantage of the affordances of voice to get across all you want to get across.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Length: \u00a03 to 5 minutes of audio Due dates: \u00a08.4 (proposal), 8.5 (script draft), 8.10 (final recorded version)   Where the manifesto was a lashing out, a noisy and confident assertion of principles against the weight of injustice and apathy, the personal belief podcast channels a quieter, more meditative kind of voice. \u00a0As we have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":13,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-61","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61\/revisions\/65"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}