This handbook, edited by members of the Humanities Podcast Network (HPN), takes stock of the state of podcasting within the humanities today. The volume combines both the practical knowledge and theoretical reflections of scholars from a range of humanities disciplines who make podcasts and/or teach podcasting to students. Communications and media scholars who study podcasts will find their research in dialogue with the humanities more broadly, in a work that is relevant to learners in many disciplines. Its contribution is therefore less to a specific field than to a large and growing community of practitioners across the humanities. The handbook’s 20 sections build on roundtable discussions at the 2021 and 2022 Humanities Podcasting Symposia, divided into five main sections including concepts in podcasting (theorizing/historicizing), institutions and podcasting (mentoring/teaching/recognition), representation in podcasting (English language-learning /Disability/Queer and Bipoc voices), making podcasts (collaboration/hosting/funding), and podcasts in the world (audience/preservation). Since these topics originated in conversation, each section features multiple voices: three to four different authors per section. In addition, each section is accompanied by a podcast episode in which the authors discuss each other’s contributions. This audio companion provides a unique opportunity to differentiate this handbook; it allows the audience to understand a more complete view of each topic and provides a space for authors to discuss complexities and intersections between their work.

Kim Adams is a Humanities in the World postdoctoral fellow at the Pennsylvania State University Humanities Institute. She holds a PhD from New York University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Medical Humanities, Literature and Medicine, Discover Magazine, Modernism/Modernity, and Post45. She co-hosts the podcast High Theory with Saronik Bosu, and she is a founding member of the Humanities Podcast Network.

Saronik Bosu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at New York University. He co-hosts the High Theory podcast, which takes apart difficult ideas from the academy with simple questions. He co-founded the Humanities Podcast Network.

Beth Kramer is a Senior Lecturer in the Rhetoric Department of Boston University's College of General Studies. She is a founding member of the Humanities Podcast Network. She has co-edited an issue of Impact interdisciplinary journal devoted to podcasting in the classroom and served as editor and contributor to the HPN Teaching Students to Podcast Manual.  

Milan Terlunen is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, affiliated with the Literature section and the Digital Humanities Lab. He is the co-founder and host of the public humanities podcast How To Read (since 2016) and the project leader for Speaking of Spirituality, a location-based podcast in collaboration with several queer-affirming Black churches in Harlem, NY. He organized the first ever session on podcasting at MLA in 2021, which led to the founding of the Humanities Podcast Network.