Academics on Air

The SpokenWeb Podcast

In the early 1980s, the University of Alberta funded a series of experimental literary radio programs, which were broadcast across the province on the CKUA community radio network. At the time, CKUA station had just been resurrected through a deal with ACCESS and was eager for educational programming. Enter host and producer Jars Balan – then a masters student in the English department with limited radio experience. For five years, Balan produced three radio series, Voiceprint, Celebrations, and Paper Tygers, which explored the intersection of language, literature, and culture, and he interviewed some of the biggest names in the Canadian literary scene, including Margaret Atwood, Maria Campbell, Robert Kroetsch, Robertson Davies, and many others.

This episode is framed as a “celebration” of those heady days of college radio in the early 80s. In it, clips from Jars’s radio programs, recovered from the University of Alberta Archives, supplement interviews with Balan and audio engineer Terri Wynnyk. Special tribute will be given to the recently departed Western Canadian poets Doug Barbour and Phyllis Webb through the inclusion of their in-studio performances recorded for Balan’s own Celebrations series. By looking back on the pioneering days of campus radio, this episode sheds light on the current moment in scholarly podcasting and how the genre is being resurrected and reimagined by a new generation of “academics on air.”

Special thanks to Arianne Smith-Piquette from CKUA and Marissa Fraser from UAlberta's Archives and Special Collections, and to SpokenWeb Alberta researcher Zachary Morrison, who worked behind the scenes on this episode.

SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from (and created using) Canadian Literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. To find out more about Spokenweb visit: spokenweb.ca . If you love us, let us know! Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada.

Episode Producers:

Ariel Kroon is a recent graduate of U of A. Her PhD thesis studied narratives of crisis in Canadian post-apocalyptic science fiction from 1948-1989, and what contemporary Canadians can learn from them. She is interested in the ways that the attitudes of the past shape our future-oriented imaginaries and actions in the present. She has published in SFRA Review and The Goose, and is currently a non-fiction editor at Solarpunk Magazine. Research interests of hers include post-humanist feminist theory and philosophy, ecocriticism, and solarpunk. Connect with her on YouTube, at Academia.edu, or her personal blog.

Nick Beauchesne (U of Alberta) completed his doctoral studies at the University of Alberta in 2020. He currently works remotely as a sessional instructor at the U of A, and in-person at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. His speciality is in twentieth century occult literary networks and modernist magazines, and he is also a vocalist and synthist performing under the pseudonym of Nix Nihil. As a SpokenWeb RA, he is currently preparing to present at the upcoming Symposium on Campus Radio at U of A in the 1980s and its contribution to debates around sexist language.

Chelsea Miya is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the SpokenWeb research team at the University of Alberta. Her research and teaching interests include critical code studies, nineteenth-century American literature, and the digital humanities. She has held research positions with the Kule Research Institute (Kias), the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC), and the Orlando Project. She co-edited the anthology Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene (Open Book Publishers 2021), and her article “Student-Driven Digital Learning: A Call to Action” appears in People, Practice, Power: Digital Humanities outside the Center (MIT Press 2021).

Sound FX/Music

BBC Sound Effects. “Communications - Greenwich Time Signal, post January 1st 1972.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07042099.

BBC Sound Effects. “Doors: House - House Door: Interior, Larder, Open and Close.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07027090.

BBC Sound Effects. “Footsteps Down Metal Stairs - Footsteps Down Metal Stairs, Man, Slow, Departing.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07037171.

BBC Sound Effects. “Industry: Printing: Presses - Electric Printing Press operating.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07041078.

Bertrof. “Audio Cassette Tape Open Close Play Stop.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/s/351567/.

Constructabeat. “Stop Start Tape. Player.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/constructabeat/sounds/258392/.

Coral Island Studios. "28 Cardboard Box Open" Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/Coral_Island_Studios/sounds/459436/.

Gis_sweden. “Electronic Minute No 97 - Multiple Atonal Melodies.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/gis_sweden/sounds/429808/.

GJOS. “PaperShuffling.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/GJOS/sounds/128847/.

IESP. “Cage Rattling.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/IESP/sounds/339999/.

InspectorJ. “Ambience, Children Playing, Distant, A.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/398160/.

Johntrap. “Tubes ooTi en Vrak.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/johntrap/sounds/528291/.

Kern PKL. “Limoncello.” Blue Dot Sessions, https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/104864.

Kyles. “University Campus Downtown Distant Traffic and Nearby Students Hanging Out Spanish +Some People and Groups Walk by Steps Cusco, Peru, South America.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/kyles/sounds/413951/.

Lillehammer. “Arbinac.” Blue Dot Sessions, https://app.sessions.blue/album/9f32a891-6782-4a63-8796-cafa323b711e.

Michaelvelo. “Packing Tape Pull.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/Michaelvelo/sounds/366836/.

Nix Nihil. “Vocal Windstorm.” Psyoptic Enterprises, 2016.

Oymaldonado. “70's southern rock mix loop for movie.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/oymaldonado/sounds/507242/.

Psyoptic. “Forest of Discovery.” Thought Music. Psyoptic Enterprises, 2006.

Sagetyrtle. “Cassette.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/sagetyrtle/sounds/40164/.

Suso_Ramallo. “Binaural Catholic Gregorian Chant Mass Liturgy.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/Suso_Ramallo/sounds/320530/.

tonywhitmore. “Opening Cardboard Box.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/s/110948/.

Ziegfeld Follies of 1921. “Second hand Rose” [restored version]. George Blood, LP. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/78_second-hand-rose_fanny-brice-grant-clarke-james-f-hanley_gbia0055858a/Second+Hand+Rose+-+Fanny+Brice+-+Grant+Clarke-restored.flac

Archival Audio

Carlin, George. "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” Indecent Exposure. Little David Records, 1978.

“Dorothy Livesay.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 8 Feb. 1984.

“Douglas Barbour.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 10 Oct. 1983.

“Margaret Atwood.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 12 Oct. 1983.

“Marian Engel.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 18 Jan. 1984.

“Linguistic Taboos and Censorship in Literature.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 8 April 1983.

“Phyllis Webb.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 16 Nov. 1983.

“Poetry: The Sullen Craft or Art.” Paper Tygers. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 1 Jan. 1982.

“Robert Kroetsch.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 23 Nov. 1983.

“Rudy Wiebe.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 21 March 1984.

“Stephen Scobie.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 26 Oct. 1983.

“Women’s Language and Literature: A Voice and a Room of One’s Own.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 4 March 1981.

“Speech and Its Characteristics.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 18 March 1981.

Works Cited

The Canadian Communications Foundation, https://broadcasting-history.com/in-depth/brief-history-educational-broadcasting-canada.

Bashwell, Peace. “Weird and Wonderful Scenes from the Bardfest.” The Gateway, November 10, 1981, pg. 13. Peel’s Prairie Provinces, http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/GAT/1981/11/10/13/.

The Canadian Communications Foundation (CCF). “CKUA-AM.” History of Canadian Broadcasting, https://broadcasting-history.com/listing_and_histories/radio/ckua-am.

Fauteux, Brian. “The Canadian Campus Radio Sector Takes Shape.” Music in Range: The Culture of Canadian Campus Radio. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015, pp. 37-64.

Kostash, Myrna. “Book View.” The Edmonton Journal, 17 Jan. 1981.

Kirkman, Jean. “CKUA: Fifty years of growth for the university's own station.” University of Alberta Alumni Association: History Trails, March 1978, https://sites.ualberta.ca/ALUMNI/history/affiliate/78winCKUA.htm.

Remington, Bob. “Banning of Radio Show Called Cowardly.” The Edmonton Journal, 26 May 1983.

Further Reading

Armstrong, Robert. “History of Canadian Broadcasting Policy, 1968–1991.” Broadcasting Policy in Canada, Second Edition. University of Toronto Press, 2016, pp. 41-56.

The Canadian Communications Foundation (CCF). “A Brief History of Educational Broadcasting in Canada.” History of Canadian Broadcasting, https://broadcasting-history.com/in-depth/brief-history-educational-broadcasting-canada.

Deshaye, Joel. The Metaphor of Celebrity : Canadian Poetry and the Public, 1955-1980. University of Toronto Press; 2013.

Gil, Alex. “The User, the Learner and the Machines We Make” [blog post]. Minimal Computing, 21 May 2015, https://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/thoughts/2015/05/21/user-vs-learner/.

MacLennan, Anne F. “Canadian Community/Campus Radio: Struggling and Coping on the Cusp of Change.” Radio’s Second Century: Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, edited by John Allen Hendricks, Rutgers University Press, 2020, pp. 193-206.

Rubin, Nick. “‘College Radio’: The Development of a Trope in US Student Broadcasting.” Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, vol. 6, no. 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 47–64.

Walters, Marylu. CKUA: Radio Worth Fighting For. University of Alberta Press, 2002.