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    Introduction to Meg Palmer

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    By on DRC Grad Fellows

    Transcript

    [the click-clacking of a keyboard typing.]

    Hi friends. My name is Meg Palmer, and long before I was an “academic” with a capital A, I was a musician.

    [music fades in. It is my quartet, Past Curfew, singing the scat section of “Everything Happens to Me” arranged by Melody Hine. Music fades out.]

    At the same time that I was learning to read words on a page, I was blessed to be learning solfege at the same time too. (Thanks, Mr. B.) 

    [chorus vocalizing, warming up on the vowel “oo” in a Do, Re, Mi, Re, Do pattern.]

    As a result, music and text are forever intertwined in my brain and in my body. “Voice” for me, has never been a metaphor the way it seems to be so often used in composition, detached from embodied sound-making. So it is probably no wonder that my research interests have always laid in the multimodal. As an undergraduate, this took the form of an obsession with digital storytelling, fostered by my research mentor and partner Dr. Crystal Bickford. Together, we saw the world via conference city, and I learned just how big and wide rhetoric and composition can be.

    Alt text: a collage of photos of Meg presenting at various conferences
    Figure 1. Undergraduate research gave me confidence and a network. It’s even how I met my husband, Tim! 

    [train whistle, followed by the sound of a train clattering down the tracks.]

    This love for multimodality was further fostered by DePaul’s master’s in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse (shout out Lisa Dush and Tim Elliott!) where I spent my years in Chicago riding and recording the train, taking pictures of bottlecaps I collected, singing in a barbershop chorus, and composing in a myriad of ways that were slowly building towards something bigger, but at the same time was still knowable to me—or at least unnamable. 

    [distant sound of firetruck siren in the background. This was apt, but not intentional. Just an inevitable byproduct of living on a too-busy main road.]  

    Graduating in spring of 2020 probably didn’t help, but it did lead me to accept the first job that accidentally fell into my lap, teaching first year writing at Johnson and Wales University (despite my persistent refrain during my MA that I “didn’t really plan on teaching”).

    [Bender from Futurama sings: “Now that is irony!”]

    In these in-between years, I taught first- and second-year writing, and honors composition, and public speaking, centering remix and multimodality, and having conversations about what is and is not a genre as my students tested the limits of the already enormous sandbox we were playing in. It was those incredibly kind and thoughtful and weird and wonderful students who finally inspired me to apply to PhD programs.

    It was then at Northeastern University in my first year of the English PhD program that my interests finally found a place to roost at the hearth of sonic rhetorics, a gratitude I owe to many sound scholars across the country who have buoyed me, but which is first owed Dr. and DJ Todd Craig. 

    [record scratch, followed by a hip hop instrumental beat. The music is “Epic Win” by Moire. The music plays under the narration for a while.]

    I read his book ‘K For The Way’: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies my very first semester in proseminar, I got to review it for Composition Studies later that year, and it profoundly changed my brain chemistry and the way I saw the contours of our field. THIS IS RHETORIC? THIS IS LITERACY??? I thought to myself! HIP HOP COUNTS???  

    [Lil Jon’s “Yeah!” from Usher’s song by the same title, ft. Lil Jon & Ludacris.]

    My copy of K for the Way is underlined, dog eared, and sticky noted. Its spine is cracked and its cover is worn as it has come with me basically everywhere for the past two years. Through K for the Way, Todd Craig affirmed something I had learned in my own high school’s radio booth, had learned in my barbershop chorus, 

    [hip hop beat fades out as the chorus vocalizing fades in and quickly out] 

    and sitting at my grandpa’s feet while he played guitar, 

    [a short twangy guitar riff]

    something I had known in my body for a long time: 

    [the last note of the guitar riff reverbs and distorts slightly]

    We come to know the world and ourselves not only through print text and language-based communication, but through music, through dancing, through bodies, and through each other.

    This then led me to the Sound Studies and Writing Collective (SSWC), a standing group at 4Cs. 

    [upbeat, jazzy piano fades in. The song is aptly named, “Opportunity Walks” by Kevin McLeod.]

    At my first business meeting, I raised my hand to become junior chair and just this past fall co-edited the SSWC’s (hopefully!) forthcoming oral history with Kyle Stedman for the CCCC Documentarian Project’s special exhibit titled, Documenting a Moment of Change. At my most adrift, when I knew that sonic rhetorics existed, but didn’t know how I could be a part of it, it was Kyle and other wonderful sound scholars like Kati Fargo Ahern, Steph Ceraso, Harley Ferris, Steven Hammer, Steph D.C. Parker, and Jon Stone who brought me from the edge of the sonic pool into the symphony at the deep end.

    [the splashing sound of something being dropped into water as the piano melody fades, followed by a whoosh of a fire starting. The fire crackles softly underneath the narration.]

    Sonic rhetorics put gasoline on my passion for multimodality and for embodied rhetoric, and has empowered me to do all sorts of creative-critical work, at the intersection of my academic life and my life as a barbershop singer… 

    [music fades in. It is my quartet, Past Curfew, singing “Together We Can” by the Cheetah Girls, arranged by Maggie Alexander.]

    …like studying social singing practices, building an oral history archive of everyday barbershop stories, and starting way too many, way too-academic conversations about gender and drag at barbershop conventions.

    Alt text: a collage of photos of Meg singing in their quartet and chorus.
    Figure 2. I started singing barbershop when I was just 16 years old. Currently, I sing in two barbershop quartets (Past Curfew and The Kings) and the current Northeastern District Champion chorus, Voices United.

    In short: I am obsessed with how we make meaning in what sometimes feels like an ever-unstable world. These are the adventures that brought me the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, 

    [a high pitched voice says, “Yay!” in the style of a videogame achievement.]

    a vibrant community of kindred spirits asking similar questions. I am excited for the opportunity to continue connecting with awesome and letting my artistic and academic minds run wild, together.

    [music increases in volume emerging from the background to the foreground, my quartet singing the lyric, “Together we can shoot the moon, stop the rain, even ride a hurricane, if we wanna.” The music then fades out.]

    Sooooo… that’s me! Or at least a lot of it, as much as one can really capture in an audio blog intro without spending too much time looking into their own belly button. Outside of all that, I love to camp and hike, hang out with my cats Tico and Cider, and I’m an avid reader. (Dungeon Crawler Carl anyone?)

    [Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook narrator Jeff Hayes grumbles, “Goddammit, Donut.” The jazzy upbeat piano music starts again.]

    If you wanna chat about sound—or Carl and Donut—you can find me at palmer.meg@northeastern.edu. 

    Thanks for listening.

    [music continues playing for a few measures with the click-clacking of the keyboard typing over it, before both slowly fade out.]

    Music Credits:

    Sound Effects: 

    Other Sonic References:

    • “Now that is Irony” from Futurama episode Season 4 Episode 18: “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings.”
    • “Yeah!” by Usher ft. Lil Jon and Ludacris

    Photo Credits: 

    Author

    • Meg Palmer

      Megan (Meg) Palmer is a PhD student in the English department at Northeastern University. Their research interests include sonic rhetorics, digital humanities, and the first-year writing experience. Meg is an avid reader and can often be found singing in their barbershop quartets, Past Curfew and The Kings.

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