RPTF Conference 2023

A Century of Broadcasting: Preservation and Renewal

Click on a day to look at the what’s happening:

Thursday, April 27th

Library of Congress Madison Building Doors Open: 8:30 (Independence Avenue Entrance)

9:15-10:45

Library of Congress Reading Room Introduction

Special Event

LOC West Dining Room

Join Staff from the National Audiovisual Conservation Center as we walk you through the process of fulfilling research requests from inside the Library. This presentation will provide insight into how to more effectively search for sound recordings and learn how collection material is preserved and accessed.

Chairs: Laura Jenemann, Library of Congress

Harrison Behl, Library of Congress

Examining Local History Through Community Podcasting

Workshop

LOC Dining Room A

Local Switchboard NYC will present a workshop on ways participants can examine local history through community podcasting and incorporate Radio Preservation Task Force’s various initiatives into their reporting. The workshop will discuss: ways participants can utilize radio and sound archives for inclusion in audio segments and story ideas; the importance of interviewing community members and documenting neighborhood events; and tips on ways to archive audio. Local Switchboard will walk participants through our process of using radio and sound archives to create an audio mood board so they may discover the sound of their podcast.

Facilitator: Jordan Gass-Poore,’ Local Switchboard NYC

Discussant: Ted Westerveldt, Library of Congress

Lost and Found Sound: Cultural and Technological Histories Recovered 1

Panel

Montpelier

A series of prepared presentations on the theme of loss and preservation in radio archives. Participants speak for 15 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Karen Cerka, National Geographic

Karen Cerka, National Geographic, “History Unraveled: From Wires to Reel-to-Reel, Digitizing Voices from the Past to Reconstruct and Reimagine the Stories Told in our Film

Alexandra Hui, Mississippi State University, “Listening to Loss: Conservation Radio and the Sounds of Extinction, 1930-1945”

Stacey Copeland, Simon Fraser University, “Lesbian Radio Radicals: Tracing Canada’s Queer and Feminist Soundwork in the Archives”

Scott Almany, Birthplace of Country Music Museum, “Piecing Together an Audio Puzzle: A Project Utilizing Cutting Edge Technology to Recover a Broadcast from Our Past”

Amanda Dawn Christie, Independent Artist, “From the Ionosphere to the Internet: Archiving Ephemeral Interference and Transmissions from HAARP”

Sound Submissions 1: Collections Research

Moderated Discussion

Mumford

This session focuses on best practices in material preservation and institutional accessioning of large collections. Topics include processing of photographic, paper, radio, and born-digital collections. Presenters from public, university, and heritage institutions discuss innovative approaches to thinking through best workflow practices in preservation work, per the idiosyncrasies of each medium. Speakers talk about their projects for 10-12 minutes followed by a discussion regarding approaches to large collection processing, including which new digital tools are changing workflow practices.

Chair: Michal Krzyzanowski, Uppsala University

Larry Lichty, Northwestern University

Kay Grigsby, Wartburg College and Archives of Iowa Broadcasting

Julie McVey, National Geographic

Lisa Rabin, George Mason University

Rory Solomon, New School for Social Research

Discussant: Josh Shepperd, University of Colorado Boulder + RPTF

Radio and Decolonization

Workshop

LOC Dining Room C

This session will be a reflective roundtable on the NEH-funded Summer Seminar on Radio and Decolonization, led by co-directors Andrea Stanton, Rebecca Scales and Alejandra Bronfman, in July 2021.The seminar sought to support projects that bring the history of decolonization into conversation with radio history and the interdisciplinary field of sound studies by exploring broadcasting’s impact in multiple geographical regions during the “long” era of decolonization from the 1930s to the 1970s. The seminar was centered on the following questions: how might the study of radio broadcasting and sound technologies change how we understand the processes of decolonization around the world? How might the study of decolonization disrupt the disciplinary norms of radio and sound studies? Participants examined the issues raised by bringing together radio history, sound studies, and decolonization through thematic sessions: broadcasting infrastructure and sound technologies in decolonizing states; music and decolonization; archives and sources; whiteness and racialization in sound studies; and the intersections of memory, sound, politics, and nostalgia. Participants and others will share their experiences and future plans with RPTF audiences.

Co-Chairs: Alejandra Bronfman, SUNY-Albany, Rebecca Scales, University of Rochester, Andrea Stanton, University of Denver

Sophia Brady, Princeton University

Cheryl Higashida, University of Colorado, Boulder

Sylvia Serrano, Duke University

11:00-12:30

Building a Field: Writings about Mexican, Chicana, Latinx Radio Listeners and Listening

Moderated Discussion

Pickford Auditorium

Professor Inès Casillas leads a discussion with the authors of three recent books in Spanish language radio history, Feminista Frequencies: Community Building through Radio in the Yakima Valley (by Monica De La Torre), The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public (by Christopher Chávez) and Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting Along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950 (by Sonia Robles).

Chair: Dolores Inès Casillas, University of California, Santa Barbara

Christopher Chávez, University of Oregon

Monica De La Torre, Arizona State University

Sonia Robles, University of Delaware

Narrative Half-Life

Special Event

West Dining Room

Narrative Half-Life is a continuing series of creative-nonfiction media artworks that co-mingle

and complicate family histories as told to me by my grandfather, Lt. Colonel William Sapper,

who was a Manhattan Project engineer, and my mother, Lynn Needham, who grew up in

Richland, Washington, during the Second World War. During the war years, Bill made sound recordings of friends and colleagues, documenting original jazz music, limericks, and labor poems as well as conducting interviews and recording regional radio broadcasts. In this presentation, I will share recently conserved sound recordings from war-era Richland relating to Hanford’s legacy of secrecy and will play excerpts of my work that reveal how inherited memory has played a role in my artmaking and scholarship over the course of my career.

Jay Needham, MFA

Jay Needham is an artist, musician, researcher, writer-editor and cultural producer who utilizes multiple creative platforms to produce his works, many of which have a focus on sound and site specific field research. As a hearing-divergent person, Needham explores present and emerging ecologies of the electromagnetic spectrum that often feature the sense of sound and vibration as a component in the interpretation of his works. His sound art, productions for radio, visual art, performances and installations have appeared at museums, festivals and on the airwaves, worldwide. His most recent sound installation is on permanent display in the BioMuseo, designed by Frank Gehry in The Republic of Panama. Needham is the editor of Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, published by The University of California Press. His writing appears in the books Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time, Culture and Moving Sounds: A Cultural History of the Car Radio. Additionally, his writings have been published in the journals, Exposure, Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology and Leonardo Music Journal.

Discussant: Neil Verma, Northwestern University

Lost and Found: Cultural and Technological Histories Recovered 2

Panel

LOC Dining Room A

A series of prepared presentations on the theme of recently recovered radio archives. Participants speak for 15-20 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Eric Hoyt, University of Wisconsin Madison

Sam Litzinger, CBS, and Michael Freedman, George Washington University “Richard C. Hottelet: From Script to Broadcast”

Mike Hickcox,”’‘Night Call’ – The Original Coast-to-coast Civil Rights Conversation”

Stephanie Sapienza, University of Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, and Eric Hoyt, University of Wisconsin, Madison, “Unlocking the Airwaves: Revitalizing an Early Public and Educational Radio Collection”

Radio Archives and Literary Research

Panel

Montpelier

Scholars who pursue the “archival turn” in modernist studies into the radio archive often encounter a curious contradiction. Traces of literary output abound, but what is there is often not what one needs or expects or thinks germane. This panel addresses the functions of the radio archive as it relates to the study of literary culture at a range of scales, from the nation-making scope of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to the regional poetry forum provided by Pacifica Radio to the fate of radio documents at the edges of access. In each case, “the archive,” as an abstract noun denoting the sum of all records, exists in complex relation with the individual archives which constitute it: for literary scholars, the dream of access must always contend with realities of loss, damage, and distance. As these papers show, however, those realities tell their own tales of the intertwining of institutional, cultural, and political history.

Chair: Jessica Berman, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Debra Rae Cohen, University of South Carolina “The BBC Archive and the Problem of Accent”

Lisa Hollenbach, Oklahoma State University, “Listening to Poetry in the Pacifica Radio Archives”

Damien Keane, SUNY-Buffalo, “Radio By-Products: Open-Source Intelligence and Gray Literature”

Folklife On the Air: Archival Radio Collections at the American Folklife Center

Moderated Discussion

Mumford Room

Among its robust and diverse archival holdings, the American Folklife Center stewards many collections of radio programming that features traditional and local culture, languages, and practices. In this session, staff from the Center will offer descriptive overviews for several of these collections while also sharing items and contextual background. Given their various roles at the Center, staff will also be able to discuss aspects of processing, preservation, and access as related to the radio collections under consideration. Specifically, these collections will be: the Henry Sapoznik collection (AFC 2010/003) featuring Yiddish radio broadcasts (discussed by AFC archivist, Marcia Segal); the Kitchen Sisters collection (AFC 2022/002) featuring materials that have supported the 40-plus year career in broadcasting of Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva (discussed by AFC archivist and acquisitions coordinator, Jesse Hocking); the Indians for Indians collection (AFC 1988/037) of broadcast recordings for the show out of Norman, OK that ran from 1943-1950 (discussed by AFC reference specialist Judith Gray); and, the Radio Research Project collections (AFC 1941/005 and 1941/011) stemming from Alan Lomax’s many forays into broadcasting (discussed by AFC’s Head of Research and Programs, John Fenn).

Chair: John Fenn, American Folklife Center

John Fenn, American Folklife Center

Judith Gray, American Folklife Center

Marcia Segal, American Folklife Center

Jesse Hocking, American Folklife Center

Reflections: Gender and Feminism

Reflections Series

LOC Dining Room C

Reflections on Broadcasting History panels examine past, present, and future trends in US radio and television history. Sessions discuss vital trends in broadcasting history, explore continuing unanswered questions in the field, interrogate considerations of space (local, national, global) in the past and the future of the field, and highlight scholarship moving the field in generative new directions.

Chair: Allison Perlman, University of California Irvine

Sherri Berger, Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Alison Kibler, Franklin and Marshall University

Maureen Mauk, University of Wisconsin Madison

Lisa Rabin, George Mason University

12:30-1:15 LUNCH BREAK

1:15-2:45

Elana Levine’s Her Stories

Book Talk

Pickford Auditorium

A discussion of Elana Levine’s recent book Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History.

Chair: Nora Patterson, Auburn University

Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Andrea Press, University of Virginia

Stacy Takacs, Oklahoma State University

“Come On Along and Join us”: Including the 1970s Children’s Television Program Vegetable Soup in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Panel

West Dining Room

In September 1975, a new children’s program—entitled Vegetable Soup—premiered on dozens of American commercial and public television stations with the expressed aim of “facilitating better communication on the subject of cross-cultural understanding” and, more specifically, “countering the negative effects of racial prejudice.” Produced and distributed by the Bureau of Mass Communications of the New York State Department of Education, and funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Vegetable Soup was unlike any other contemporary children’s program in terms of its subject content and purpose to address key social determinants of health, namely race, racism, and racial isolation. To this day, it remains a unique initiative, and this uniqueness can now be appreciated and understood in detail with the series included in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration of the Library of Congress and WGBH Educational Foundation, founded through the efforts of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This panel brings together all the parties who contributed to the availability of Vegetable Soup in the AAPB. Together, they will describe the intersecting and mutually-supporting archival, historical, legal, and technical experience dedicated to making this landmark show of the 1970s now freely accessible in the 21st century and preserved for future generations.

Chair: Rachel Curtis, Library of Congress

Monica Gray, New York State Archives

Laura Montgomery, New York State Archives

Jeffrey S Reznick, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

Miranda Villesvik, WGBH and American Archive of American Broadcasting

Media Preservation and Media Archaeology

Workshop

LOC Dining Room A

This session brings together two different, but complimentary, branches of practice and theory when it comes to archival media history. Joshua Harris, preservationist at the University of Illinois will lead a session on the care, handling and preservation of transcription discs, a crucial but poorly understood medium that presents unique challenges for long term physical and digital preservation. In the second part of the session, Lori Emerson, founder of the University of Colorado’s Media Archaeology Lab, will discuss the Lab’s work in preserving functioning media of the past and making it accessible.

Chair: Matthew Kirshenbaum, University of Maryland

Joshua Harris, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

Lori Emerson, University of Colorado Boulder and Media Archaeology Lab

Radio at the Crossroads: Histories of Radio and Media Convergence

Panel

Montpelier

A century after broadcast radio’s introduction, radio remains the most accessible and used medium worldwide. However, radio as a medium has undergone profound transformations during its one hundred year tenure, whether it be in its technology, its industrial organization, its programming and content, or its audiences and cultural representations. For instance, while terrestrial broadcast radio remains ubiquitous and popular, radio is today more often accessed through podcasts and digital streaming devices than received in its traditional over-the-air form. Similarly, broadcast radio production has been transformed by digital production and editing technologies, and many producers and listeners do not necessarily recognize what they make or listen to as “radio” (calling it podcast or simply “audio”). This panel addresses radio’s many transformations through a series of diverse yet thematically-integrated papers that draw attention to intermediality and radio’s history at various key moments of transition. Together, these papers seek to contribute to an understanding of radio’s longevity and resilience, and the medium’s remarkable ability to adapt to ongoing change and redefinition.

Chair: Elena Razlogova, Concordia University

Kyle Barnett, Bellarmine University, “Radio’s Reshaping of the Recording Industry, 1925-1935”

Amanda Keeler, Marquette University, “Post-Network Science Fiction Radio Programming of the 1950s”

Andrew Bottomley, SUNY-Oneonta, “Headwaters of Sound: Streaming Audio’s Origins in U.S. College Radio Broadcasting.”

Discussant: Aswin Punathambekar, University of Pennsylvania

Deviceful Data: Exploring Cutting Edge Approaches to Creating Radio Collections

Panel

Mumford

A series of prepared presentations exploring the creation of new archives for radio and sound collection. Participants speak for 15-20 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Thomas Miller, CUNY-Brooklyn College

Thomas Miller, CUNY-Brooklyn College, “Re-Soundings: Sonic Anthropology, Audio Archives and Radiophonic Reinvention”

Paul Conway, University of Michigan, “Remaking Meaning in the Music Time in Africa Radio Archive”

Eric Van Balkum, Muziekschatten/Podiumkunst, “Online Sheet Music Archive Muziekschatten: Reviving Radio and Television Music History”

Paul Kornman, Old Time Radio Researchers, “Old-Time Radio Researchers: A Free and Independent Archive”

Discussants: Michal Krzyzanowski, Uppsala University, Jay Needham, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Reflections: Sports Radio

Reflections Series

LOC Dining Room C

Chair: Allison Perlman, University of California, Irvine

Matthew Barton, Library of Congress

Christine Becker, University of Notre Dame

Gary Edgerton, Butler University

David Jenemann, University of Vermont

3:00-4:30

Grant Writing Consultation

Special Event

Pickford Auditorium

An open session for attendees pursuing grants related to radio preservation. Presenters will speak briefly with remarks on successful grant writing, and take questions from attendees about their projects.

Chair: Jesse Johnston, University of Michigan

Joshua Sternfeld, National Endowment of the Humanities

James Neal, Institute of Museum and Library Services

Louisa Kwasigroch, CLIR

The Local and the Global in Radio’s Post War International Contexts

Panel

LOC West Dining Room

A series of prepared presentations on archival based projects that explore radio in international and diasporic postwar contexts. Participants speak for 15-20 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Kyle Stine, Johns Hopkins University

Caroline Kita, Washington University in St. Louis “Listen Up!” Radio Programming Magazines and the Creation of Democratic Listeners: Germany, 1946-1948”

Sophie Brady, Princeton University, “Local Broadcasts, Global Effects: The ‘Antenne Expérimentale’ of Radio France’s Studio-École (1955-1969) and Post-Independence Franco-African Relations”

Ruta Kupetyte, Vilnius University, “Soviet Lithuanian Radio Broadcasts to the Diaspora and its Decoding in the Press of the Lithuanian Americans”

Julide Etem, University of Virginia “How Film Diplomacy Redefines Whose Speaking: Unpacking Power and Belonging?”

Discussant: Nathaniel Greenberg, George Mason University

Aural Counterpoints: Radio and Resistance in the Americas

Panel

LOC West Dining Room

While the rise of mass media, particularly radio, in the Americas in the second half of the 20th century allowed for the wider circulation of official government discourse, it also created new mechanisms for disseminating insurgent messages and encouraging political resistance. Different kinds of outlets, including large independent radio stations, community radio stations, diaspora radio stations, and pirate radio stations, navigated the tension between state narratives and political resistance. This panel offers an analysis of radio stations in Haiti and its diaspora (the large independent station Radio Haïti-Inter in Port-au-Prince and the New York-based radio program L’Heure Haïtienne), Colombia (the Catholic Church-run community station Radio Sutatenza), and El Salvador (the underground anti-government station Radio Venceremos). We examine how these stations contributed to national and international mediascapes, amplified messages of resistance, and in some cases conformed to government authorities in order to achieve their ends. We also examine the permeabilities between the different categories of radio station (i.e., “independent” versus “government,” “activist” versus “objective,” “domestic” versus “diaspora,” “national” versus “community”). As we explore the particularities of each case, we also consider how these radio stations reveal a broader trend across the region, as people used radio to spread ideas and foment resistance to dictatorship, military rule, and ordinary oppression.

Chair: Alejandra Bronfman, SUNY-Albany

Ayanna Legros, Duke University, “Radio Activism and the Unification of the Haitian Diaspora (1983 – 1990).”

Iván Espinoza Orozco, Georgetown University, “Radio Venceremos: Radio Cultural Production and the Creation of An Aural Counter-Canon in the Salvadorian Civil War (1979-1992)”

Silvia Serrano, Duke University, “Radio Sutatenza’s Poetic Compositions as Citizen Participation.”

Laura Wagner, “Radio Haïti-Inter: Resistance sans Frontières.”

Discussant: Christine Ehrick, University of Louisville

Radio Recordings: Documentation, and Broadcast Historiography

Panel

Montpelier

Scholarship about the history of American radio is still relatively underdeveloped when compared to the histories of other media in part because so few early radio recordings have been preserved. Furthermore, issues surrounding access, rights, and dissemination can complicate the usefulness of the archival recordings that do exist. Each of these presentations addresses a set of issues facing broadcast historians when working with archival radio recordings. The panel argues that task of preservation is insufficient by itself. To address huge gaps in radio historiography, the panel calls for a wider effort to improve access, address intellectual property barriers, and coordinate among different constituencies of libraries, archives, collectors, scholars, and educators.

Chair: Karl Schadow

Kathy Fuller-Seeley, University of Texas Austin, “A Trip to Jack Benny’s Vault:

Possibilities and Limitations of Well-Known Radio Archives”

Cynthia Meyers, College of Mt. St. Vincent, “Recordings versus the Paper Trail: Adventures in Radio Archives”

Alexander Russo, Catholic University of America, “A Distorting Lens: Scoping, Copyright, and Radio Formats”

Lee McGuigan, University of North Carolina, “How Ad-Tech Got Its Spots: Automation, Optimization, and the Broadcast-era Ancestry of Programmatic Advertising”

Andy Stuhl, McGill University, ”Broadcast Automation: Challenges and Openings for Media Historiography”

Sound Submissions 2: Discovering and Describing New Collections

Moderated Discussion

Mumford

This session focuses on curatorial and access strategies across influential heritage, private sector, vendor, collector, and research sectors. Presenters discuss opportunities for discovering and building searchability, as well as presenting rare audio history in museum, digital, and live broadcast settings, with an eye on the logistical steps that take place to increase public awareness of American sound history. Speakers present their general approach to curation and access specific to their projects for 10 minutes, followed by a discussion about successful strategies to increase awareness about collections.

Chair: Brandon Burke, Iron Mountain Library and Archival Services

Joshua Bennett, Indiana University

Kelly Doyle, Smithsonian Institution

Sammy Jones, CNN

Ira Revels, Gay Spirit Radio

Bryce Roe, Northeast Document Conservation Center

John Passmore, WNYC

libi rose streigl, University of Colorado, Boulder and Media Archaeology Lab

Discussant: George Blood

Reflections: Law and Policy

Reflections Series

LOC Dining Room C

Chair: Sandra Ristovska, University of Colorado, Boulder

Muira McCammon, University of Pennsylvania

Jennifer Peterson, University of Southern California

Victor Pickard, University of Pennsylvania

4:45-6:30

Pirate, Micro, Free, and Ephemeral: Documenting and Preserving the Unlicensed Side of the Dial

Moderated Discussion

Pickford Auditorium

Unlicensed broadcasting has been a part of radio’s global history wherever and whenever regulatory licensing systems have been established. But this history has often been overlooked, discounted or driven underground owing to the clandestine and irregular nature of these stations as well as disdain from the established radio industry and punitive enforcement from government agencies. The panel is comprised of archivists, scholars, historians and journalists who will consider the myriad social, cultural and political contexts in which pirate radio stations operate, the diverse content that they generate in the US and abroad and the challenges of documenting their history and preserving their recordings.

Chair: David Goren, The Brooklyn Underground Radio Archive Project

Eddie Bohan, Irish Pirate Radio Archive

Larisa Kingston Mann, Temple University

Joan Martinez

Luke Owen, Death is Not the End

Larry Will

Effective Research Collaboration Roundtable

Special Event

LOC West Dining Room

This panel draws together Radio Preservation Task Force leaders and others to discuss how RPTF can better facilitate research collaboration among researchers and institutions. Panelists will start out with five minute statements sharing thoughts about projects that they have been part of in the past, reflecting on key aspects of these efforts that made them effective or ineffective. The discussion will focus on how to move RPTF’s mission forward through strong partnerships and collaborations in the future

Chair: Shawn VanCour, University of California, Los Angeles

Sarah Cunningham, National Archives, LBJ Library

Heather Birks, Broadcast Education Association

Jane Curry, Santa Clara University

Stacy Kowalcyk, Dominican University

Emily Goodmann, Northeastern University

Richard Popp, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

David Seubert, University of California, Santa Barbara

Yuri Shimoda, Disney Music Group

Questions of Embodiment and Affect in the Radio Archive

Panel

LOC Dining Room A

This panel begins with the premise that as the mission of the Radio Preservation Task Force matures, both scholars and archivists must examine what we have archived (and what is not yet archived) with a critical eye. Panelists discuss the radio/soundwork archive from the perspective of the body, including embodiment, disembodiment, and emotional/affective states. Given that radio is often thought of as a “disembodied” medium, and that archiving itself tends to erase bodies in its attention on records, documents, and metadata systems, we seek to help the RPTF not lose sight of the centrality of bodies and embodiment to sound history and its preservation.

Chair: Jennifer Hyland Wang, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Jason Loviglio, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, “Serial Radio, Melancholy, and the Archive”

Jennifer Hyland Wang, University of Wisconsin, Madison, “Do You Hear What I Hear?”: How the Archives Reveal Radio’s Gendered Stories”

Catherine Martin, Boston University “Archival Recovery and Social Understanding: On the Importance of Broadening the Canon to Include Female Detectives”

Josie Torres Barth, North Carolina State University, “The Undead Announcer: The Failure of Radio’s Intimate Address in Suspense’s “Ghost Hunt” (1949)

Leadership Roundtable on Support of Audio Archive Research

Moderated Discussion

Montpelier

What role does institutional leadership play in facilitating innovative research into audio archives? This panel brings together leaders to discuss policies and programs that have proven effective in their respective institutions and to share thoughts about how support and outreach can be more effective going forward. Presenters are invited to reflect on their experiences for 5-10 minutes before turning to a general discussion and taking questions and comments from the audience.

Chair: Josh Shepperd, University of Colorado and RPTF

Karma Foley, Smithsonian Channel

Brecht Declercq, Radiotelevisionesvizzera (RSI)

Alan Inouye, American Library Association

Jesse Johnston, University of Michigan

Angela Tate, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Hannah Sommers, Library of Congress

Reflections: Screening Archives

Reflections Series

Mumford

Chair: Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia and Allison Perlman, University of California Irvine

Alan Gevinson, Library of Congress and American Archives of Public Broadcasting

Jeffrey Jones, University of Georgia and Peabody Awards

Michael Mashon, Library of Congress

Tony Schwartz: The Sounds of his City and Beyond

Special Event

Dining Room C

A special event celebrating the work of broadcaster, sound designer and WNYC radio host Tony Schwartz on his centenary. The event will highlight some of his work about New York City preserved in the Library of Congress, along with other notable recordings. Anton Schwartz, and the Kitchen Sisters will join the discussion as special guests.

Chair: Matthew Barton, Library of Congress

Anton Schwartz, Special Guest

Nikki Silva, The Kitchen Sisters

Davia Nelson, The Kitchen Sisters

Andy Lanset, WNYC Director of Archives

7:00-8:30

Sounds of the Globe: Jad Abumrad Interviews Jim Metzner

Library of Congress Jefferson Building, Great Hall

Special External Event

Adjacent to our conference, the Library of Congress’s Live at the Library series is hosting a one-day special immersive audio installation with sounds from around the world, created by artist Jim Metzner, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in Mahogany Row. walking through three adjoining rooms, you’ll experience a timelapse version of an entire day, plus a retrospective of 40 years of recordings, with photographs and mementos. To attend this, please reserve a timed-entry pass. For decades, Metzner has documented the world through sound and hosted the series “Pulse of the Planet.” Metzner’s archive is now part of the Library’s collections. At 7:00 pm on the 27th in the Jefferson Building across Independence Ave, Metzner will be interviewed live by Radiolab founder Jad Abumrad. Register in advance here.

Friday, April 28th

Library of Congress Madison Building Doors Open: 8:30 (Independence Avenue Entrance)

9:15-10:45

Doron Galilli’s Seeing by Electricity

Book Talk

Pickford Auditorium

A discussion of Doron Galili’’s recent book Seeing by Electricity: The Emergence of Television: 1878-1939

Chair: Michele Hilmes, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Doron Galili, University of Stockholm

Susan Murray, New York University

Philip Sewell, Independent Scholar

** This talk is sponsored in part by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

War of the Worlds Letters: Fan Mail, Fake News, and the Digital Archive

Workshop

LOC West Dining Room

Since 2017, we have developed an education resource about the War of the Worlds broadcast and archival evidence of its infamous reception. The Screen Arts Mavericks & Makers Collection at the University of Michigan Library preserves 1,344 letters sent to the New York City office of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre in the aftermath of the broadcast, which were kept by one of Welles’s producing partners and largely forgotten for seventy years. Our project makes the War of the Worlds letters—and the many personal stories they contain—digitally available and fully searchable by city, state, and transcribed text. The digital database is also accompanied by vetted lesson plans we created in collaboration with several teachers and schools in Southeast Michigan to help teach an array of subjects aimed at middle school, high school, and community college students. All of the participants in our workshop have experience using these resources in classroom settings with students ranging in age from middle school to university undergraduates. Our workshop will first explain how interested educators can use our database and its teaching materials. We will then address how our project provides insights for those who wish to produce radio-related digital archives and/or create educational resources for students from varying grade-levels, including: how to partner with teachers to write lesson plans conforming to various standards, and how to deal with copyright issues related to large collections with many authors.

Facilitators: Phil Hallman, University of Michigan, Vincent Longo, University of Michigan, A. Brad Schwartz, Princeton University

Discussant: Ryan Reft, Library of Congress

Reflections: Labor and Social Class

Reflections Series

LOC Dining Room A

Chair: Allison Perlman, University of California, Irvine

Kit Hughes, Colorado State University

Laurie Ouellette, University of Minnesota

Carol Stabile, University of Oregon

Oscar Winberg, Aba Akademi U

Cults of Personalities: Radio Hosts, Announcers, and DJs

Panel

Montpelier

A series of prepared presentations of research that draw on archives to examine the crucial historical role of radio hosts, announcers, DJs, and their fans in a number of historical contexts and regions. Participants speak for 15-20 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Miles Levy, Smithsonian Channel

Sadie Couture, McGill University, “Mary Margaret McBride and the Desire for Crossed Wires.”

James Deutsch, Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, “Joe Pyne: Popular Provocateur on Radio’s Hot Medium”

Alex Kupfer, Vassar College, “The ‘Ty Tyson Movement’: Regional Fandom and the 1934 NBC World Series Broadcast”

Melissa A. Weber, Curator, Tulane University Special Collections,“Jivin’ with Dr. Daddy-O: Race, Radio and Representing Black in Jim Crow New Orleans.”

Discussant: Joshua Clark Davis, University of Baltimore

Recapturing ‘Liveness’: Innovating Approaches to Working with Collections of Live Performance

Panel

Mumford

A series of prepared presentations of research into the importance of live performance and live audiences, as well as the very idea of liveness in radio archives. Participants speak for 15-20 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Nathan Moore, WTJU and National Federation of Community Broadcasters

Anne MacLennan, York University, “Generating Programs, Genres, Schedules, and the Audience for American and Canadian Radio Broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s”

Stephanie Brown, Washington College, “Put Your Hands Together: Exploring the Industrial and Archival Potential of Live Comedic Performance Podcasts”

Sebastiane Hegarty, Solent University, “Tapping the air: ghosts, landscape and technology”

Reflections: Reception and Fandom

Reflections Series

LOC Dining Room C

Chair: Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia

Caetlin Benson-Allott, Georgetown University

Robin Means Coleman, Northwestern University

Allison McCracken, DePaul University

11:00-12:30

Reflections on Broadcasting History Welcome Session

Reflections Series

LOC Pickford Auditorium

This event is an informal welcome session for all participants in the Reflections on Broadcasting History panels, chaired by Reflections programming curators Allison Perlman and Aniko Bodroghkozy. All Reflections Participants and others welcome

Co-Chairs: Allison Perlman, University of California Irvine and Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia

Issues in Public Radio, Education and Outreach

Moderated Discussion

LOC West Dining Room

This session is a moderated discussion on the topic of what major issues have shaped and continue to shape radio’s relationship with education and outreach. In an age of cutbacks for public radio, how can archives illuminate the value of radio’s historical educational role and place in civic discourse, shaping how the medium can grow in the future? Participants are invited to share their thoughts on these and adjacent topics for 5-10 minutes before turning to a general discussion and taking questions and comments from the audience.

Chair: Susan Smulyan, Brown University

Dylan Flesch, WNYC

Laura Garbes, University of Minnesota

Katie Day Good, Miami University

Joy Hayes, University of Iowa

Tim Shaffer, University of Delaware

Mike Janssen, Current

Access, Provenance and the Politics of the Archive Across Borders

Panel

LOC Dining Room A

A series of prepared presentations on the politics of creating, moving and accessing radio and audio archives in international and cross-border contexts. Participants speak for 15-20 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Alejandra Bronfman, SUNY-Albany

Carolyn Birdsall, University of Amsterdam and Erica Harrison, University of Amsterdam “Politics, Provenance, Access: Researching Historical Radio Collections in Europe”

Ayanna Legros, Duke University,“Haitian Diaspora Radio: The L’Heure Haïtienne Archive as Memory Work”

Laura Wagner, Duke University, “Bringing Radio Haiti Home: Archives, Access, and Exclusion”

Discussant: Toby Seay, Drexel University

New and Developing Methods for Historical Soundwork Research

Moderated Discussion

Montpelier

A roundtable in which participants discuss new and developing methodologies for conducting soundwork research. This session is loosely organized around the Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, a forthcoming anthology of 35+ chapters authored by a prominent list of international radio and podcasting scholars and practitioners whose expertise extends across a variety of humanities-based fields. It is to be published in late 2023 by Oxford University Press. Contributing authors to the volume explore both popular and hitherto overlooked areas of soundwork and utilize new, emerging, or mixed research methods to do so. This roundtable will highlight innovative and resourceful ways of exploring historical and contemporary radio and audio media, including offering strategies for using these approaches in future research, writing, and pedagogy.

Chair: Andrew Bottomley, SUNY-Oneonta

Stacey Copeland, Simon Fraser University

Michele Hilmes, University of Wisconsin Madison

Lisa Hollenbach, Oklahoma State University

Alexander Russo, Catholic University of America

Kathy Fuller-Seeley, University of Texas

David Gibson, and Brian Foo, Library of Congress

The State of Black Radio: Debunking the Death of Radio Though Innovation

Special Event

Mumford Room

This session brings together scholars and national broadcast experts from executive, talent, programming, and national syndication sectors to discuss the sustainability of radio through innovation. Panelist will discuss the current state of Urban radio and Black radio culture while exploring current innovation, function, and connected themes such as technology, programming, ownership, diversity, community, and the significance of preserving the sound of the culture.

Moderators: Karen M. Turner, Felèsha Love, and Angela Greene

Participants: Frankie Darcell, Skip Dillard, Supa Cindy, Carla Ferrell, Olivia Fox, Bionce Foxx, Tammie Holland, First Lady, Patty Jackson, Ken Johnson, Maxx Myrick, Belinda Parker, Sue Purnell

Sound Submissions 3: Strategies in the Preservation and Access of Recorded Sound

Moderated Discussion

LOC Dining Room C

The Library of Congress Head of Recorded Sound chairs a roundtable discussion featuring Smithsonian, university, and nonprofit sector experts focusing on contemporary best practices in material, digital, and storage techniques of sound media. Participants discuss the relationship between preserving endangered materials, cataloging, and public awareness of cultural and political history, and answer questions from the audience about services provided at their institutions. Facilitated by the Head of Recorded Sound, speakers briefly discuss issues regarding collection management and the role of new technologies in accessioning and access, with an eye on questions from the audience.

Chair: Patrick Midtyling, Library of Congress

Brian DeShazor, This Way Out Radio

Bob Horton, George Washington University/Smithsonian Archives

Ryan MacMichael, Hip Hop Radio Archive

Virginia Millington, StoryCorps

Alison Reppert Gerber, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

John Vallier, University of Washington Seattle

Rachel Jacobson, Georgetown

David Plotkin, Director Of Creative Services and Production for 1010 WINS news radio

12:30-1:15 LUNCH BREAK

1:15-1:30

RPTF 2023 Welcome Session

Special Event

Montpelier

A brief session to welcome participants, with remarks by Conference Committee Chair Neil Verma, RPTF heads Shawn VanCour and Josh Shepperd, and Gregory Lukow, Chief of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (Packard Campus) at The Library of Congress

Chair: Neil Verma, Northwestern University

Gregory Lukow, Library of Congress Packard Center

Shawn VanCour, University of California, Los Angeles

Josh Shepperd, University of Colorado, Boulder

1:45-3:15

Jennifer Porst’s Broadcasting Hollywood

Book Talk

Pickford Auditorium

A discussion of Jennifer Porst’s recent book Broadcasting Hollywood: Disruption, Convergence, and Feature Films on Early TV.

Chair: Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia

Deborah Jaramillo, Boston University

Michael Kackman, University of Notre Dame

Jennifer Porst, University of North Texas

Reflections: Educational and Public Broadcasting 1

Reflections Series

LOC Dining Room A

Chair: Allison Perlman, University of California Irvine

Glenda Balas, University of North Texas Dallas

Sherman Dorn, Arizona State University

Andy Lanset, WNYC Director of Archives

Bill Siemering, National Public Radio, Developing Radio Partners, and Wyncote Foundation

Patricia Aufderheide, American University

Alan Stavitsky, University of Nevada Reno

Wick Rowland, Colorado Public Television and University of Colorado, Boulder

Sound Submissions 4: Developing Infrastructure to Preserve Sound

Moderated Discussion

Dining Room A

This session features speakers engaged in cutting edge strategies to interpret, preserve, and engage with hidden histories and endangered audio collections. Presenters discuss their innovative work interpreting and creatively curating audio found in shortwave, university library, and federal archive collections, and discuss how they apply digital strategies to audience engagement and searchability.

Chair: Kathy Fuller-Seeley, University of Texas

Chuck Howell, University of Maryland College Park

Michael Kramer, SUNY-Brockport

Tre Berney, IASA

David Gibson, and Brian Foo, Library of Congress

Sam Brylawski, Library of Congress

Toby Seay, Drexel University

Laurie Sather, Hagley Museum and Library

1:45-3:15

Archiving Broadcast Excellence: Accessioning and Commemorating Awards and Achievements in Sound History

Panel / Moderated Discussion

Montpelier

This is a mixed session, in which two formal papers will be presented on the theme of awards-granting as a feature of broadcast practice, and its relationship with accessioning. Following these presentations, participants will have a moderated discussion on the importance of commemoration, archiving and public memory in sound history, drawing on their experience and work in these areas.

Chair: Frank Absher, St. Louis Media History Foundation

Taylor Cole Miller, University of Wisconsin La Crosse, “”On Stories That Matter”: Highlighting the Peabody Awards Media Center and Archive”

Karen Petruska, Gonzaga University “And the Winner is…: Exploring the History and Industry of Media Awards Ceremonies”

Mike Conway, Indiana University

Rosa Eberly, Penn State University

Frank Absher, St. Louis Media History Foundation

LEGENDS: The Evolution and Legacy of Black Radio Culture

Special Event

Mumford Room

This session culminates in a celebratory launch of a historical collection called LEGENDS: the Evolution and Legacy of Black Radio Culture which brings together national and iconic influencers who helped shape history. BWIR and RPTF project committee members will lead a reflective discussion about 20th and 21st century radio culture, music, ownership, entertainment, and programming architects. Scholars, media experts, and radio advocates will participate in Q&A during the last 30 minutes of the presentation.

Presenter: Felèsha Love

Moderators: Skip Dillard, First Lady, Dr. Laura Schnitker, Karen Turner, Sam Weaver Participants: Carole Carper, Frankie Darcell, Tony Gray, Ken Johnson, Helen Little, Barry Mayo, Maxx Myrick, Dyana Williams

Critical Listening Pedagogy

Panel

LOC Dining Room C

This panel is for educators who wish to integrate sonic, oral, and aural knowledge into their teaching. The presenters will draw from their research on Latinx radio history and sound culture as well as experience collaborating with students on audio production and research to offer suggestions for others. The goal of incorporating audio resources in class is to empower students to consider other source material for their research or creative projects. This panel is ideal for educators who are interested in theoretical and practical approaches to teaching and learning with audio technology, and who seek to foster students’ critical listening skills and appreciation of diverse sound cultures. An open, facilitated discussion where those in attendance are invited to participate will follow the two presentations.

Chair: Dan Hockstein, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Presenters: Eric Silberberg, CUNY-Queens College, Esther Diaz Martin, University of Illinois Chicago

Discussant: August Black, University of Colorado, Boulder

3:30-5:00

Interview with Jasmine Garsd

Special Event

LOC Pickford Auditorium

Inès Casillas interviews Jasmine Garsd, NPR Criminal Justice correspondent, host of The Last Cup and former co-host of Alt.Latino.

Chair: Dolores Inès Casillas, University of California, Santa Barbara

Jasmine Garsd, National Public Radio

** This talk is sponsored in part by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Reflections: Educational and Public Broadcasting 2

Reflections Session

LOC West Dining Room

Chair: Allison Perlman, University of California, Irvine

David Goodman, University of Melbourne

Brian Gregory, St. Francis College

Katherine Jewell, Fitchburg State University

Jason Loviglio, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Digital Humanities in the Classroom: AAPB, BackStory, and Bunk as Sound Historical Sources

Moderated Discussion

LOC Dining Room A

This panel will explore the possibilities of teaching with archival audio and podcasts, specifically focusing on panelists’ experiences creating, preserving, and teaching with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, BackStory radio, and Bunk. Much of public broadcasting’s past has broad applicability for social history, political science, American studies, and media studies teaching; yet, these archival resources are rarely used in classrooms. This panel will frame a dialogue between media producers, archivists, and educators about how to bridge the gap between archival broadcasting holdings, in-class learning, and the public/digital humanities. One major hurdle stems from the relative nascence of curated audio and audiovisual collections, compared to the wealth of curated print document collections. Educators often cannot sift through thousands of hours of programming to find pieces originally intended for broadcast that have content and form pedagogically appropriate for formal instruction in specific disciplines and grade levels. The result is that humanities educators often draw on a small set of canonical case studies and miss opportunities to put historic public broadcasting material to fresh educational uses or to draw upon the wealth of new scholarly interpretation presented in audio and a/v media. This panel is comprised of individuals from different fields who are collaborating to address this curatorial and pedagogical problem. Historian Kathryn Ostrofsky coordinates the digital archive for Bunk history, and has used AAPB and BackStory in college history surveys, seminars, and online classes. Cinema and media studies scholar Joshua Glick uses AAPB materials to teach about the role of nonfiction in progressive social movements and highlights these sources in lectures, research prompts, and in-class workshops to build media literacy. Elementary librarian Tom Bober works with the AAPB to promote the use of primary sources in K-12 settings. Archivist Alan Gevinson, Library of Congress project director for the AAPB, gathers and preserves archival public media and organizes exhibits that help educators navigate the available content. As digital editor for BackStory, Diana Williams led efforts to support and increase educators’ use of the podcast and to create accompanying classroom resources; as a marketing specialist she now helps other humanities podcasts connect with their audiences. The panelists will share their own successes and challenges in order to begin a conversation with the audience about the possibilities of future collaborative projects that can support preservation, curation, and the development of open educational resources to support humanities teaching with audio and audiovisual media.

Chair: Diana Williams, Williams Multimedia

Tom Bober, RM Captain Elementary

Alan Gevinson, Library of

Congress and American Archives of Public Broadcasting

Joshua Glick, Bard College

Kathryn Ostrofsky, University of Richmond

Black Women in Radio (BWIR) National Historic Collection

Special Event

Montpelier Room

This session brings together intelligence, talent, art, culture, diversity, and humanity in in America’s first, and largest contemporary historical collection of veteran women broadcasters resolving one of biggest archival oversights in history. The Black Women In Radio (BWIR) National Historical Collection and Oral History Project, comprised of 39 clarion voices known as the “BWIR Inaugural 30,” documents radio career contributions, legacies, and over 150 hours of sound. The audience (scholars, national and local media experts, students, radio advocates, and conference goers) will witness living history in real time as inaugural members meet in person for the first time to celebrate the historical collection and advocate for the inclusion of women’s contributions to education and research. Speakers are asked to prepare 5-10 minute commentary

Presenter: Felèsha Love Speakers: First Lady, Angela Greene, Cortney Hicks-Lanier, Vy Higginsen, Hattie Leeper, Helen Little, Kesha Monk, Angela Stribling, Jasmine Sanders, Dyana Williams

Participants: BWIR Inaugural 30 (All Radio Veterans) Rashan Ali, Your Lady Edie “Bee” Anderson, Carol Blackmon, Frankie Darcell, Bonnie DeShong, Supa Cindy, Mutter Evans, Carla Ferrell, Olivia Fox, Bioncé Foxx, Angela Greene, Cortney Hicks-Lanier, Vy Higginsen, Tammie Holland, Cathy Hughes, First Lady, Patty Jackson, Hattie Leeper, Joyce Littel, Helen Little, Felésha Love, Tammi Mac, DeDe McGuire, Michelle Meeks, Rene Miller, Kesha Monk, Belinda Parker, Pat Prescott, Sue Purnell, Jasmine Sanders, Sasha the Diva, Egypt Sherrod, Shirley Strawberry, Angela Stribling, Ann Tripp, Karen M. Turner, Dyana Williams, Michel Wright, Angela Yee

Ask an Archivist

Special Event

Mumford

Designed as opportunity for informal conversation, Ask an Archivist is an event sponsored by the Education and Outreach Division of the RPTF and provides time and space during the conference for archivists, researchers, teachers, students, and media makers to discuss collection holdings, preservation and access strategies, newly available and underused materials, research opportunities, and creative uses of historical primary sources.

Chair: Kit Hughes, Colorado State University

Chuck Howell, University of Maryland

Patrick Midtyling, Library of Congress

Casey Davis Kaufman, WGBH/AAPB

Tre Berney, Cornell University Library

Paul Korman, Old Time Radio Researchers

Miranda Villesvik, WGBH/AAPB

Brad Werb, US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Reflections: Journalism and Politics

Reflections Session

LOC Dining Room C

Chair: Aniko Bodroghozy

Kathryn Cramer Brownell, Purdue University

Robert Browning, Purdue University and C-Span Archive

Charles Ponce de Leon, California State University Long Beach

Heather Hendershot, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Daniel Marcus, Goucher College

Will Mari, Louisiana State University

Michael Stamm, Michigan State University

5:30-7:00

Kitchen Sisters Retrospective

Keynote Special Event

Montpelier

A special keynote event featuring The Kitchen Sisters, longtime radio producers and audio artists Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva. Their work includes stories for NPR, KQED, AIR, and independent podcasts including Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound, and The Keepers. Their many awards and recognitions for their work at NPR and in podcasting include the duPont-Columbia Award and two Peabody Awards. The Kitchen Sisters archive has recently become a part of the collection at the Library of Congress.

Host: Stacey Copeland, Simon Fraser University

Featured Speakers: The Kitchen Sisters

The Kitchen Sisters, award winning radio producers and audio artists Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva, have been creating documentaries and educational projects together since 1979. They are the creators of hundreds of stories for NPR, public broadcast and podcast about the lives, histories, art and rituals of people who have shaped our diverse cultural world.

They are the producers of the duPont-Columbia Award-winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, and the two Peabody Award-winning NPR series Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project with Jay Allison. They are also the producers of The Hidden World of Girls, the NPR series and special hosted by Tina Fey, that explores the lives of girls and the women they become, and The Making Of…, about what people make in the Bay Area and why, a production with KQED and AIR. Their current series, The Keepers, a radio, podcast, and social media project (Keeper of the Day) chronicles stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors, historians—protectors of the truth and free flow of information and ideas. They also produce a weekly radio show featuring the work of independent producers on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM community radio for the Monterey Bay Region. The Kitchen Sisters Present podcast, part of PRX’s Radiotopia network, was awarded a 2017 Webby for Best Documentary Podcast. Their NEH funded series, Hidden Kitchens: Kimchi Diplomacy: War and Peace and Food heard on NPR’s Morning Edition, received a 2017 James Beard Award.

Their first book, Hidden Kitchens: Stories Recipes and More by NPR’s Kitchen Sisters was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was nominated for a James Beard Award. They are currently at work on their second book, Show the Girls the Snakes: The Power of Storytelling.

** This keynote is sponsored in part by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and by the MA Program in Sound Arts and Industries at Northwestern University.

7:00

Graduate Student Mixer

Offsite: Bullfeathers Pub (410 First St SE, Washington, DC)

After the keynote, grad students are invited to gather for a mixer at Bullfeathers Pub.

Saturday, April 29th

Library of Congress Madison Building Doors Open: 8:30 (Independence Avenue Entrance)

9:15-10:45

Archives and Airwaves: Protecting Radio’s Legacy Through Archive Materials

Panel

Pickford Auditorium

How do we choose what to prioritize in preservation? What lessons have been learned about assessing these choices? In a series of prepared presentations on the theme of archival loss and preservation, panelists look at specific types of radio, specific datasets associated with radio archives, and particular archival initiatives that have taken on the problem of prioritization in protecting radio’s legacy. Participants speak for 15-20 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Martin Johnson, University of North Carolina

Eddie Bohan, “Pirate Radio Archive Protection”

Joshua Harris, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, “Preserving and Conserving the Legacy of Public Radio Broadcasting: The Transcription Discs of WILL Radio at the University of Illinois”

Laura Schnitker, University of Maryland, “Radio Archives, Recovered Voices and Reconstructions of American History”

Jada Watson, University of Ottawa, “Listening for the Lost Archive”

Discussants: Christopher Ali, Pennsylvania State University, Dan Streible, NYU

Radio News and Commentary: Revisiting Developmental Modes of US Broadcast Journalism

Panel

LOC West Dining Room

A series of prepared

presentations about projects that use archives to revisit and rethink key

figures, forms and ideas associated with the rise of broadcast journalism.

Participants speak for 15 minutes each, with discussion.

Chair: Robert Browning, Purdue University and C-Span Archives

AJ Bauer, University of Alabama, “Propaganda in the Guise of News: Fulton Lewis Jr. and the Origins of the Fairness Doctrine”

Thomas Doherty, Brandeis University, “Max Jordan, Live from Europe in 1938”

Mary Myers, Regent University, “The Peter Rabbit News Service: Hopping Through

History”

Lisa Napoli, CUNY Graduate Center, “The Birth of Public Radio & 24-hour Cable News”

Michael Socolow, University of Maine, “The Invention of the Network Evening News Broadcast in the United States: Floyd Gibbons and NBC’s ‘Headline Hunter’”

Discussant: Mark Poepsel, University of Southern Illinois

Circuit Building: Founding Archives and Engaging Contemporary Audiences

Panel

LOC Dining Room A

A series of prepared presentations about ways archives both in the United States and in Latin America have been developed through new networks dedicated to preservation, and how they have launched efforts at audience engagement. Participants speak for 20-25 minutes each. This session is the first of a two-part session. In the second part, those listed as Discussants here discuss the examples put forward in this first session and expand on how to optimize archives for audience engagement.

Chair: Tim Brooks, ARSC

Allison Schein Holmes, Studs Terkel Archive, “Launching the Studs Terkel Radio Archive”

Christine Ehrick, University of Louisville, (with Perla Olivia Rodríguez Reséndíz, National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mónica Maronna, University of the Republic, Uruguay), “Perspectives on the Digital Preservation of Ibero-American Radio Archives”

Maristella Feustle, University of North Texas, “Radio Repeater: How the Preservation of Willis Conover’s Voice of America Programs Carries on Their Mission”

Discussants (during second session 11:00-12:30): David Craig, University of Southern California

Mark Torres, Pacifica Radio Archives

Dara Baker, US National Archives

Siobhan Hagan, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Wave Farm’s Radio Art Fellowship and Archive

Panel

Saturday April 29, 9:15 – 10:45 a.m..

Library of Congress Montpelier Room

The Wave Farm Radio Art Fellowship engages researchers and artists in focused work including: radio art listening, archive contributions, community workshops, and original radio art creation. In this session, recent fellows will be in conversation reflecting on their work during their fellowship, including their approaches to selecting works for Wave Farm’s Broadcast Radio Art Archive which aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks made by artists around the world, created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or pirate transmission.

Introduction: Galen Joseph-Hunter, Wave Farm Executive Director, Author “Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves” (PAJ Publications: 2011)

Moderator: Anna Friz, University of California Santa Cruz, Wave Farm Radio Art Archive Mentor and Advisor

Discussants: Iru Ekpunobi, Andy Stuhl, José Alejandro Rivera, Tyler Maxin, 2022 and 2023 Radio Art Fellows

A View from France: Radio Archives and the Making of Transnational Histories

Moderated Discussion

LOC Mumford

This moderated discussion will draw on each participant’s experience in writing radio histories based on audiovisual and archival material in France, pertaining to France, and the Francophone World. In addition to offering a different national, social, and cultural environment for hearing and interpreting radio broadcasts that complicates Anglocentric accounts of the medium, the presence of a powerful state-run radio (and later, television) network offers a distinct context for considering the history of radio production and preservation. By thinking collectively about how our research experiences informed our own research (and its transnational, imperial, transatlantic dimensions), we hope to contribute to broader discussion at the conference regarding preservation, access, the differences between non-aural/aural sources, as well as the ways in which radio histories can deepen histories of race, empire, and migration.

Chair: Celeste Day Moore, Hamilton College

Rebecca Scales, University of Rochester

Annie de Saussure, Lafayette College

Evan Spritzer, Cooper Union

Derek Vaillant, University of Michigan

Isabel Huacuja Alonso’s

Radio for the Millions

Book Talk

LOC Dining Room C

Isabel Huacuja Alonso presents portions of her recent book Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders, and discusses it with Inès Casillas.

Chair: Erica Robles Anderson, New York University

Isabel Huacuja Alonso, Columbia University

Dolores Inès Casillas, University of California, Santa Barbara

11:00-12:30

Archiving LGBTQ+ Radio History

Panel

LOC Pickford Auditorium

This interactive panel will discuss and listen to clips from the long lasting LGBTQ+ radio series, This Way Out radio with a special focus on issues of archival tagging historical collections related to gender and sexuality. This panel will offer listeners an opportunity to create and use tags, and include a discussion on how we can both tag in ways that are true to variations in language across time, but also can anticipate future terminology.

Chair: Kathleen Battles, Oakland University

Stacey Copeland, Simon Fraser University

Brian DeShazor, This Way Out Radio

Tanya Zuk, Georgia State University

Black-Centered Radio: Preservation, Recovery, and Representation 1

Panel

LOC West Dining Room

The African American and Civil Rights caucus promotes the preservation, study, and publication of analyses of black-focused radio relevant to civil rights and black experiences. Presenters at the two-part session explore, symbolize, and reclaim black-targeted audio media and their purveyors at Africa-American institutions, broadcast outlets, archival organizations, and within communities. The central theme of the sessions includes the role black-centered radio occupies in championing racial equity and inspiring other efforts to transform the United States into a better country for all people. Ten scholars and practitioners will present during 15 minute slots over two sessions. A moderator/discussant will orchestrate a question and answer period after each session.

Chair: Aaron Johnson, University of Pittsburgh

Jocelyn Robinson, WYSO “The HBCU Radio Preservation Project: A Collaborative Model”

Bala Baptiste, Miles College, “Targeting Black People: Radio Journalism at Chicago’s WVON & New Orleans’s WYLD”

Robert Riter, University of Alabama and Bob Friedman, Birmingham Black Radio Museum, “Mentoring Students in Community-Based Radio Preservation Practice”

Micaela di Leonardo, Northwestern University “The Greatest Radio Show You Never Heard of”

Response to Circuit Building Session

Moderated Discussion

LOC Dining Room A

This session is a continuation of the “Circuit Building” panel that takes place immediately prior to it. The first session focused on presentations about archives building networks and initiating outreach. This session will provide space for a moderated discussion about the examples put forward in this first session, as well as other similar initiatives. From there, discussants are invited to expand on their thoughts about how to optimize archives for audience engagement: what techniques have proven most effective? Each participant is encouraged to prepare a few brief remarks before pursuing a general discussion.

Chair: Maristella Feustle, University of North Texas

Tim Brooks, ARSC

David Craig, University of Southern California

Mark Torres, Pacifica Radio Archives

Dara Baker, US National Archives

Siobhan Hagan, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Allison Schein Holmes, Studs Terkel Archive

Christine Ehrick, University of Louisville

Wave Farm Radio Art Presentation

Special Event

Montpelier Room Library

Current Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow Iru Ekpunobi will premiere a radio art work in a live performance setting. José Alejandro Rivera will perform a live version of his “Co-regulating the spectrum: Meanwhile, the wave” and and we will listen to Andy Stuhl’s 25 Hz (2022) and Tyler Maxin’s “Untitled (the melody is pursy as is tore into this heart of mine)” (2023).

Introduction: Tom Roe, Wave Farm Artistic Director

Performances: Iru Ekpunobi and José Alejandro Rivera

Presentations: Andy Stuhl and Tyler Maxin

College Radio: Past, Present…and Future

Panel

Mumford

This panel brings together expert new research into the archives and histories of a number of college radio stations, from their early history to the present and future. Presenters will deliver 15 minute presentations on their research, followed by a discussion.

Chair: Nathan Moore, WTJU

Jennifer Waits, Radio Survivor, “College Radio’s Hidden Early History”

Tamar Faggen, Bard College, “WXBC A Cycle of Collapse and Rejuvenation”

Len O’Kelly, Grand Valley State University, “Money Talks: The Fight for Control of Student Radio at Grand Valley State College”

Brian Fauteux, University of Alberta, “Campus Radio Music Libraries in the Streaming Media Era,”

Discussants: Dave Walker, Smithsonian Folklife, Ken Freedman, WFMU

Reflections: African American Civil Rights Radio

Reflections Series

Dining Room C

Chair: Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia

Christine Acham, University of Hawai’i

Sage Goodwin, Oxford University

David Greenberg, Rutgers University

12:30-1:15 LUNCH BREAK

*Please note: the cafeteria is closed on Saturday. Please consult RPTF website for nearby meal options.

1:15-2:45

Mary Beltrán’s Latino TV

Book Talk

LOC Pickford Auditorium

A discussion of Mary Beltrán’s recent book Latino TV: a History

Chair: Jonathan Gray, University of Wisconsin Madison

Mary Beltrán, University of Texas

Jillian Baez, CUNY-Hunter College

Sara Hinojos, CUNY-Queens College

Black-Centered Radio: Preservation, Recovery, and Representation 2

Panel

LOC Dining Room West

Chair: Ron Singleton

Teisha Dupree-Wilson, Coppin State University, “The Guy with the Goods”: The Life and Times of DJ Georgie Woods”

Suzanne Smith, George Mason University, “Elder Michaux’s Radio Church of God: Archiving African American Religious Radio at the Smithsonian”

Sonja Williams, Howard University, “Documenting Radio for Radio –Black Radio: Telling it Like it Was”

Angela Greene, “Black Radio’s Commitment to the Black Community”

Guha Shankar, Library of Congress “The Black Encyclopedia of the Air: The Sounds of Black Identity on the Radio”

Power to the People: Radio, Past and Present in Nigeria

Panel

LOC Dining Room A

Two special presentations of research on community radio and on its relationship to rural development in Nigeria. Presenters speak for 20-25 minutes followed by questions.

Chair: Paul Bebenimibo, Delta State University

Gregory Ugbo, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, and Paul Bebenimibo, Delta State University, “Tracing the Development Trajectories of Community Radio Broadcasting in Nigeria,”

Ayokunle Onifade, Babalola University Ikeji Arakeji, “Community Radio and Rural Development in South-West Nigeria: The Journey So Far”

Reflections: Journals and Broadcasting History

Reflections Series

Montpelier

This session is unique in the series, bringing together editorial leadership from several historical and media studies journals to share thoughts about the past, present and future of how scholars write about broadcasting history.

Chair: Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia

Christopher Ali, Pennsylvania State University and Journal of Communication Law and Policy

Erica Robles Anderson, New York University and Public Culture Journal

Thomas Doherty, Brandeis University and Journal of American History

Liz Ellcessor, University of Virginia and Journal of Cinema and Media Studies

Jay Needham, Southern Illinois University and Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture

Robert Rabe, Marshall University and Journal of 20th Century Media History

Ted Striphas, University of Colorado Boulder and Journal of Cultural Studies

Sound Submissions 5: Copyright and Sound Archives

Moderated Discussion

Mumford

This session brings together national leaders from advocate, practitioner, scholarly, and policymaking sectors to discuss up to the moment discourses in copyright and access. Speakers participate in a discussion that covers connected themes such as orphan works, the origins and the work of the National Recording Preservation Board, preservation strategies, artist rights, localism, and low power fm. Each speaker is asked to prepare 8-10 minute comments to stimulate questions, followed by a long discussion an the opportunity for the audience to participate.

Chair: Maristella Feustle, University of North Texas

Patricia Aufderheide, American University

Tim Brooks, Association of Recorded Sound Collections

Kevin Erickson, Future of Music Coalition

Will Floyd, Prometheus Project

Eric Schwartz, Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board

Reflections: Music

Reflections Series

LOC Pickford Auditorium

Chair: Alexander Russo, Catholic University of America

Norma Coates, Western University

Jim Buhler, University of Texas

Jonathan Sterne, McGill University

Ethan Thompson, University of Texas Corpus Cristie

3:00-4:30

Live Interactive and Experimental Radio with Mezcal

Workshop

LOC Pickford Auditorium

Mezcal is a browser based application that allows multiple participants to collaboratively mix real-time audio for live radio events in high-quality and low-latency. Unlike other online media chat applications that work more like a telephone, Mezcal is better understood as a transmission instrument with specific features for live audio exchange and broadcast. In this workshop, August will give a short tutorial of the Mezcal software, demonstrating features and talking about some of the motivation behind it. We will then load the software in our browsers and break into groups to make a short 20-30 minute radio piece together.

Facilitator: August Black, University of Colorado, Boulder

**Special Note: To participate in this workshop, please bring headphones and either a laptop or mobile device

She Sang and That Made the Difference

Special Event

LOC West Dining Room

Session description TBD

Phylis Johnson, San Jose State

Dona Nichols, San Jose State

Discussant: Liz Ellcessor, University of Virginia

Older Time Radio

Special Event

LOC Dining Room A

Session description TBD

Chair: Matthew Barton, Curator of Recorded Sound, LOC

Sam Brylawski, Library of Congress Recorded Sound Section, former president of ARSC,

Rob Bamberger, host of “Hot Jazz Saturday Night” on WAMU-FM

Martin Grams, radio historian and author

Reflections: History of Media History

Reflections Series

Montpelier

Chair: Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia

Lauren Bratslavsky, Illinois State University

Susan Douglas, University of Michigan

Jeffrey Jones, University of Georgia and Peabody Awards

Derek Kompare, Southern Methodist University

Mark Williams, Dartmouth University

From Archive to Podcast

Special Event

Mumford

In this session, MSNBC producer Kelsey Desiderio will discuss using the Library of Congress’s archives to help creat a podcast for the network.

Chair: Neil Verma, Northwestern University

Kelsey Desiderio, MSNBC

Laura Jenemann, Library of Congress

Mike Mashon, Library of Congress

Radio and the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture

Special Event

Dining Room C

Chair: Angela Tate

4:45-6:30

The Other Spectrum: Useful Radio

Plenary Keynote

Mumford

Useful radio is defined by its utility, as distinct from broadcast radio whose function is to entertain, inform and exhort. Useful radio regulates the labor and mobility of humans, animals and vehicles on land, sea and in the air; supports state functions, including policing and surveillance; enables infrastructures of production, distribution and consumption; and links networks of technically-literate and non-technical people. As a multidirectional system of transmitting and diffusing commands, instructions and situational information, useful radio has from its origins simultaneously mapped and reproduced geographies of power and control. At the same time, manifestations like citizens band (CB) and low-power handheld radios have enabled uncountable acts of resistance and rebellion. Useful radio has played a key role in workers’ organizations, civil rights and antiwar movements and youth rebellion, and it might be considered the pulse of the January 6 Capitol riot. This plenary talk will present sounds and images together with elements of a collective research agenda in the hope of encouraging fieldwork, research, fabulation and critique within this dominant but typically unheard and barely theorized sector of the wireless spectrum.

Featured Speaker: Rick Prelinger

Rick Prelinger is an archivist, filmmaker, writer and educator who has been involved with useful radio for many years as hobbyist, author and researcher. He started Prelinger Archives in 1983; its collection of 60,000 films was acquired by Library of Congress in 2002 but since that time has again grown to include some 30,000 home movies and 7,000 other film items. Beginning in 2000, he partnered with Internet Archive to make a subset of the Prelinger Collection (now over 8,500 films) available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse. His archival feature Panorama Ephemera (2004) played in venues around the world, and his feature project No More Road Trips? received a Creative Capital grant in 2012. His 30 Lost Landscapes participatory urban history projects have played to many thousands of viewers in San Francisco, Detroit, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere. He is a board member of Internet Archive and frequently writes and speaks on the future of archives. With Megan Prelinger, he co-founded Prelinger Library, an experimental research library in downtown San Francisco open since 2004. He is currently Emerit Professor of Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz and holds an Extra Class amateur radio license as W6XBE. His book Wireless Traces (currently in progress) details the contentious history and culture of useful radio in the United States.

Sunday, April 30th

RPTF and AVMPI present: Sunday at the Smithsonian. Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Museum entrance is located on Madison Dr. NW, between 9th St NW and 12 St NW

11:00-12:30

Useful Radio Part 2: A Performance by Artists Anna Friz and Jeff Kolar in Response to Rick Prelinger’s “The Other Spectrum: Useful Radio”

Baird Auditorium, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Hosts: Walter Forsberg, Alison Reppert Gerber, Dave Walker, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Includes Q&A with artists and Rick Prelinger

Performed by: Anna Friz, University of California, Santa Cruz and Jeff Kolar, Radius

1:30-3:00

Radio at The Smithsonian

Baird Auditorium, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Radio recordings have a central historical place within Smithsonian collections across the Institution, but the medium has played other nuanced roles. This panel considers lesser-known incarnations of radio at the Smithsonian: the SI’s amateur station NN3SI, the material culture collections of radio hardware within the National Museum of American History’s Electricity Collection, and original SI-produced educational and promotional programming.

“The History of NN3SI”
Amateur Radio, known as ham radio, is a hobby using radios to make two-way communication all over the world for the purposes of enjoyment, electronic experimentation, and emergency management. The Smithsonian Institution has a long history with amateur radio going back to 1976 when SI established the radio station NN3SI during America’s bicentennial celebrations. Smithsonian Amateur Radio Group president John Weise will present the history of amateur radio at the Smithsonian and will share the current state of the radio group and its future projects.

John Weise, NN3SI President & Lead IT Specialist, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Smithsonian Institution. John Weise is a senior information technology specialist in Smithsonian’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. With OCIO since 2015, John is the engineer responsible for the overall configuration, security and management of desktop and laptop devices. Before Smithsonian, John served for five years in the United States Air Force. While in the Air Force, he started in amateur radio in 2012 while operating the Military Auxiliary Radio Service station in Elmendorf Alaska. John’s current radio callsign is N4NPG.

“Into the Airwaves: Collecting Radio at the Smithsonian”
The Smithsonian has preserved and presented radio history for over a century. From military wireless of the First World War to digital devices of today, Smithsonian collections document the technical and social development of radio. Much of that material resides in the Electricity Collections at the National Museum of American History. Curator Hal Wallace will present an overview of the radio collection, discussing how various curators developed it over the years as well as its current status. Guess what? Amelia Earhart played a cameo role in bringing radio into our holdings.

Hal Wallace, Curator, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.Hal Wallace is curator of the Electricity Collections at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Responsible for over 25,000 objects documenting the history of electrical science and technologies, Hal has specialized in the history of electric light and power since joining NMAH in 1995. He holds a Ph.D. in public policy & policy history from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

“Great Doors Swing Open: A Historical Primer on Smithsonian-Produced Radio”
From the wildly popular 1936-1942 WPA-sponsored NBC co-production, The World Is Yours, to later efforts by Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley to employ radio programs to create channels from SI’s vast academic-cultural reservoir to people in their homes throughout the nation, the history of the Smithsonian’s original radio programming is as diverse as the Institution, itself.

Walter Forsberg, Curator of Audiovisual Media, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. Walter Forsberg grew up listening to a 1947 Firestone Bakelite Air Chief Radio and is Curator of Audiovisual Media, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

3:30-5:00

RPTF Listening Party

Baird Auditorium, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Hosts: Walter Forsberg, Alison Reppert Gerber and Dave Walker, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

To cap off the conference, join us for over an hour’s worth of curious and rare radio recordings and excerpts from the collections of RPTF attendees.

“The Irish Pirate Radio Selection”
(circa early 1980s)
Presented by Eddie Bohan, Irish Pirate Radio Archive at Dublin City University

A brief complication of the many Irish pirate radio stations that populated the airwaves during a golden period of pirate broadcasting 1978-1988. Many of these stations were known as super pirates garnering millions in advertising revenue and almost bankrupting the State broadcaster RTE before stricter legislation to curb the illegal activity was introduced and the pirate stations were replaced by an independent commercial sector.

The recordings are part of the audio donations to the Irish Pirate Radio Archive at Dublin City University.

For more info: www.pirate.ie
www.radiowaves.fm
www.dxarchive.com
www.ibhof.blogspot.com

“Rediscovered Radio: Reflecting on Revolutionary Voices from the 1970s”
(1971/2017)
Presented by Jocelyn Robinson, WYSO

A return to early May 1971, when huge demonstrations were held in Washington DC, to protest the war in Viet Nam. The organizers believed that more peaceful protest methods of the past weren’t working. Theirs was a more radical agenda. For three days, protestors blocked intersections and bridges in DC, intending to shut down the federal government. The Nixon administration reacted with force, and on the third day brought in ten thousand federal troops. More than 12,000 demonstrators were eventually arrested. Amid the chaos in Washington, a new radio program went on the air. All Things Considered, NPR’s flagship news program, was born May third, 1971, and among the stories that day, listeners heard correspondent Jeff Kamen report on defiant young anti-war protestors and frustrated police officers.

For more info: https://www.wyso.org/news/2017-05-03/rediscovered-radio-reflecting-on-revolutionary-voices-from-the-1970s

“Dedication of Station NN3SI by Secretary Dillon Ripley”
(1976)
Presented by John Weise, NN3SI & Kira Sobers, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Excerpt from a recording of speeches for the dedication of the amateur radio station NN3SI at the National Museum of History and Technology (NMHT) on July 8, 1976. The station was part of the NMHT exhibition “A Nation of Nations.” Speakers featured on the recording include Secretary Sidney Dillon Ripley of the Smithsonian Institution; Harry J. Dannals, President of the American Radio Relay League; and general operator Joseph P. Fincutter.

“The Jazz Singers”
(2001)
Presented by Sonja Williams, Producer, Smithsonian Productions/National Museum of American History

The Smithsonian Productions’ Jazz Singers series was broadcast originally on public radio stations nationwide in 2001, and it was rereleased by PRX in May 2022. With Grammy Award winning singer Al Jarreau serving as host, the series’ 13 hour-long episodes explored the history of jazz singing through the vocal artistry of a wide range of artists. In this excerpt, singers Dee Dee Bridgewater, Nancy Wilson, Shirley Horn, and others talk about some of the personal challenges that women jazz singers have had to overcome.

For more info: https://exchange.prx.org/series/41948-jazz-singers

“Questionnaire pour Lesconil (1980), Yann Paranthoën”
Presented by Annie de Saussure, Assistant Professor of French, Lafayette College

In 1975, Canadian musicologist R. Murray Schafer, known for coining the term “soundscape,” traveled to five remote locations across Europe to study how villagers relate to the sounds of their rural environments. Five years later, French radio artist Yann Paranthoën traveled to the fishing village of Lesconil, Brittany, one of the towns selected for Schafer’s study, and played translations of Schafer’s findings for villagers to hear, allowing them the opportunity to respond. Questionnaire pour Lesconil, winner of the Prix d’Italia award for radio documentary in 1980, blends these diverse sonic elements, in addition to the sounds of the harbor, the natural environment, and the French, Breton, and English languages, and paints a sonic portrait of the Lesconil soundscape as it is lived and understood by its community members.

For more info: http://phonurgia.fr/editions/

“Bo Dollis and the Mardi Gras Indian Band at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival”
(circa early 1970s)
Presented by Melissa A. Weber, Curator, Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, Tulane University Special Collections (TUSC)

This live New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival performance by “Bo Dollis and the Mardi Gras Indian Band,” as introduced by festival co-founding staffer Quint Davis, features Big Chief Bo Dollis, likely joined on stage by his Wild Magnolias tribe (serving as background vocalists and percussionists), the first Mardi Gras Indians (or Black Masking Indians of Black New Orleans) to release a commercially distributed, pop music recording. The accompanying band features musicians Julius Farmer on bass, The Meters’ Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste on drums, and bandleader Willie Tee on piano. Digitized from a 3-inch sound tape reel from the Allison Miner papers (HJA-039) at TUSC, the recording can be accessed online via the Tulane University Libraries online exhibit, “Music IS the Scene”: Jazz Fest’s First Decade, 1970-1979.

For more info: https://library.tulane.edu/tusc

“Dr. Daddy-O introduces Jivin’ with Jax, WWEZ AM New Orleans”
(circa 1950s)
Presented by Melissa A. Weber, Curator, Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, Tulane University Special Collections

Excerpts from the Vernon “Dr. Daddy-O” Winslow collection (HJA-055) at TUSC feature the on-air work of Dr. Daddy-O, the first Black radio disc jockey on New Orleans airwaves. Jivin’ with Jax, sponsored by New Orleans’ Jackson Brewery beer company (aka Jax Beer), would become the first full-length radio program in New Orleans to feature a Black DJ and specifically cater to and develop a Black listenership. Selected recordings were digitized from 78 RPM discs with funding from a GRAMMY Museum® grant, and the digitized collection is accessible online via the Tulane University Digital Library.

For more info: https://library.tulane.edu/tusc

“The Peter Rabbit News Service: Sniffy Skunk”
(1964)
Presented by Mary Myers, Regent University

From the mind of the ‘Hoosier Schoolmaster of the Air,’ Clarence ‘Doc’ Morgan of the Indiana State Teachers College.

“Albert Warner on CBS: ‘Discuss moving Japanese and Nisei out of critical areas’”
(1942)
Presented by John Vallier, University of Washington

From the Milo Ryan Phonoarchive.

For more info: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/miloryan

“Over the Horizon”
(2022)
Presented by Dr. Sebastiane Hegarty, Sound Artist & Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art and Music, Solent University, UK

Composed soundscape with test signals, based on field-recordings made during three covert residencies and micro-FM transmissions at Marconi’s Lizard Wireless Telegraphy Station (Cornwall, 2017), the Niton Station at Knowles Farm (Isle of Wight, 2021) and Fog Signal Building close to ‘Marconi’s Radio Shed’ (Dungeness, 2019). The horizon opens with the acoustic beacon of the Lizard Foghorn and Dungeness siren sounding out place and providing a locational fix. Travelling through air, time and substance, sound unveils a spectral landscape, where the geological chit-chat of tapping pebbles repeats Marconi’s test signal “S”. Tapping away at matter, this litho-telegraphy interrogates landscapes littered with the architectural ghosts of listening and communication.For more info: https://sebastianehegarty.wordpress.com