Audio Bio

For this project, you will imagine, script, record, and edit a 3-4-minute audio biography. This biography should not aim to tell the story of your life; it should aim to tell a story that reveals something about who you are and where you locate yourself. Location, in this context, might be a geographic site, a physical space, a community of practice, a way of viewing the world, etc. Your biography should present a thoughtful, revealing portrait that provides listeners with some sense of who you are.

Your audio biography will be shared with our class and with the community member you will be interviewing for the refugee project. For the latter project, you will be charged with representing someone else’s life—their story, and their quest for refuge. The ethical and emotional components of such work are significant; as such, the audio biography assignment asks you to “practice” such work first on yourself—to share your own story before you share someone else’s.

Your audio biography should be composed as an audio text, weaving together a range of sonic elements (script, voiceover commentary, field recordings, other voices, music, sound effects, etc.) that you have produced and collected to communicate your message.

Details

Composing an audio biography requires a thoughtful process, from developing an outline of your imagined bio, to recording and collecting sonic elements, to writing a script for narrative or expository sections, to compiling and editing the essay.

Write (alphabetic text) a detailed outline of your audio essay as you imagine it, laying out the sequence, arrangement, and transitions of your essay
Record and/or collect the sound clips you plan to use. This includes your narration, field recordings, music, sound effects, etc.
Compile your audio essay with attention to principles of “writing for the ear”
Edit, edit, edit

Reflection

Write (alphabetic text) a reflection on your audio essay. You will write your reflection in class on the day the final essay is due. Be sure to attend to both process and product in your reflection, discussing:

Why you chose to tell the story you did
Your rhetorical and aesthetic aims in selecting, layering, and arranging your audio content
How your audio essay responds to and expands upon the rhetorical dimensions of multimodal writing in the public sphere that we have discussed in class

Outcomes & Assessment

The audio essay is worth 15% of your final grade. Over the process of composing and revising your audio essay you should be able to show progress toward achieving these course outcomes (which are also the basis for assessment):

Rhetorical Knowledge: Demonstrate awareness of and responsiveness to audience, context, and purpose.
Subject-Matter Knowledge: Engage the rich, complex subject matter you have chosen, conducting appropriate research to compose an informed and thoughtful essay for your chosen audience.
Genre Knowledge: Employ genre conventions, both textual and for audio compositions, to serve your purpose(s).
Discourse Community Knowledge: Demonstrate attention to and successful execution of the conventions specific to the discourse community, including organization, content, presentation, formatting, and stylistic/syntactical choices.
Meta-cognitive Knowledge: Evidence thoughtful, reflective practices throughout each step of your compositional process, and discuss those practices in your written reflection.
Writing Process Knowledge: Evidence significant recursive writing/thinking by developing, exploring, interpreting, evaluating, and revising content, style, and design throughout the process of composing your audio essay.
Adhere to appropriate citation conventions, fair use, and copyright for primary and secondary sources from a variety of media platforms