Live Theory

Live Theory: Living Writing & Rhetoric invites scholars in rhetorical theory, composition studies, and beyond to share their expertise with us in the form of a 15 minute talk, followed by a discussion with USC and other university faculty and guests who are able to attend live via Zoom. At Live Theory, we do not bring theory down from the clouds. Rather, theory never belonged, and perhaps never was, in the clouds to begin with. At Live Theory, we live theory, bringing life to writing and rhetoric in our scholarship, institutions, classrooms, daily lives, and beyond.

Live Theory is a society podcast hosted by Ryan Leack & Ellen Wayland-Smith, with 15 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Ryan Leack & Ellen Wayland-Smith hosts Live Theory, a society show with 15 episodes published.

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  Episode #15

  Navigating AI & Surveillance in the Classroom with Dan Dissinger

  Mar 9, 20261h 3mS1

  <p>As higher education continues to navigate attacks from the Trump administration, it is also negotiating the increased use of AI in theclassroom by teachers and students. On this special episode, we invite our USC Writing Program colleague Dan Dissinger, host of the Writing Remix podcast, to unpack the effects that AI and LLMs have on humanities classrooms, the risks of an exponential increase in reliance on AI by students, why students are using AI, and how teachers are being impacted. They also comment on the USC administration’s decision to give ChatGPT Edu to all students and faculty.</p><p>...

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  Live Theory

  EP14: Thomas Nail: Philosophy of Movement

  Oct 13, 20251h 20mS0

  <p>Thomas Nail, a Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of numerous books, including The Figure of the Migrant, Theory of the Border, Marx in Motion, Theory of the Image, Theory of the Object, Theory of the Earth, Lucretius I, II, III, Returning to Revolution, Being and Motion, and Matter and Motion, discusses his research on the philosophy of movement from antiquity to the present. Here, we take the topics of “matter and motion” and “being and motion” as orienting points but also cut across Nail’s work in ways that intersect with thinking a...

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  Live Theory

  EP13: Michelle M. Wright: Freedom, Agency, and Refuge

  Sep 14, 20251h 7mS0

  <p>Michelle M. Wright, Emory College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English, discusses her research on literary, cultural, philosophical, and political discourses on Blackness and Black identity in the Anglophone, Francophone, and Germanophone African Diaspora, from the 18th to 21st centuries. She published her first book, Becoming Black: Creating an Identity in the African Diaspora, with Duke UP in 2004, and her second book, Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology, with UMN Press in 2015. Her current project, Feeling Europe: Black and African Diasporas in the Heart of Empire, looks at how space, place, and affect destabilize yet...

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  Episode #12

  EP12: Ellen Wayland-Smith: The Science of Last Things

  Jan 22, 20251h 3mS1

  <p>Ellen Wayland-Smith, Professor (Teaching) of Writing at USC, author of Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table (Picador, 2016) and The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America (University of Chicago Press, 2020), discusses her latest book, The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Boundaries of the Self (Milkweed Editions, 2024). Here, she discusses two chapters, “Object Permanence” and “Quartz Contentment,” followed by a substantive discussion that ranges across topics of the book and to issues related to writing and rhetoric. These issues touch on personal loss and grief, the experien...

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  Episode #1

  EP11: USC Writing Program: Chatting about ChatGPT

  Oct 12, 20231h 2mS2

  <p>Our Writing Program colleagues discuss AI, ChatGPT, and emerging Large Language Models, including their potentials and pitfalls for the doing and teaching writing and rhetoric, as well as the relation to writing program administration. This episode, like Episode 8 last year with Jonathan Alexander, is part of the 4th annual “The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival,” hosted by Charles Wood. This year’s theme is “AI: Applications and Trajectories.” Here, we hope to illuminate through an extensive discussion the uncertain future in regard to powerful technologies that will likely reshape writing practice for writers, teachers, and students alike.</p>

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