LAUSR

Against some claims of post-feminism, feminist public scholarship continues to run an amplified risk of public backlash. Consider for example Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency project, a series of YouTube videos contesting the sexism and poor representations of women and girls in film, television, comics, and games. The accessible videos served as public discussion tools until Sarkeesian found herself the target of a massive, misogynistic, hate campaign, where all of her online and social media sites were flooded with threats of rape, violence, sexual assault, and even murder. Public discussions of her work now spark backlash and controversy, rather than an actual engagement with the social issues. The importance of Sarkeesian’s case has been treated with scrutiny in various pieces in Feminist Media Studies (e.g., Karen Boyle 2015; Sophie Mayer 2015; Eve Ng 2015), but what we have learned from her case, and others like it, is that the agitative model of feminist activism is not always productive as a method for feminist public scholarship. Our driving questions, then, are how can we improve our methods for feminist public scholarship, and move beyond critique, in order to foster greater public engagement? How do we “do” feminist public scholarship without alienating the very audiences that would most benefit from this work? To answer this question—and as part of a graduate seminar on feminist methodologies at Penn State University—we met with Sarah Koenig, creator of the award-winning (and incredibly popular) podcast Serial, to discuss some of her methods for successful public engagement. What drew us to Koenig’s work was her ability to raise controversial questions about social justice without alienating mainstream audiences. In this piece, we explore how the intersection of the podcast medium and public scholarship can move our feminist methods beyond critique. We sat down with Koenig to find out more about her methods in developing, hosting, and producing Serial. Koenig herself identified as a feminist in our conversation with her, yet does not brand her work explicitly as such. Koenig described herself as a reporter who is interested in asking questions about interesting human stories. Serial does, however, employ feminist methods—Koenig investigates highly politicized issues around social justice, a key area of inquiry in feminist research. In season one, Koenig examines the case of Adnan Syed, who was convicted of murder by circumstantial evidence, and in season two, Koenig focuses on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who faced public scrutiny and came under investigation by the United States Army Forces Command for leaving his post, which led to a fiveyear captivity by the Taliban. Serial has reached over 220 million downloads and as such, has created immense visibility for topics of feminist interest, including challenging claims to objective truth and institutional power structures. A core strategy Koenig uses in Serial is to raise questions rather than to author conclusions. Koenig told us that she refrains from pushing a particular agenda herself; instead, she feels