Project Overview

This project is the culmination of an independent study conducted under the supervision of Dr. Tanya Clement during the summer of 2022. The project seeks to explore how archival rhetorics are employed in contemporary podcasting through an analysis of Jill Lepore’s podcast The Last Archive. Below, you will find annotations of the first four episodes of The Last Archive Season 1, which were completed using Audacity. While an essay abstract is included below, you may access the full essay by following the “Full Essay” link.

Essay Abstract

The Last Archive, a podcast created and hosted by historian Jill Lepore, asks the provocative question, “Who killed the truth?” In other words, the podcast traces the history of truth, seeking to establish a historical context for our current “post-truth” society. This essay critically examines how Lepore rhetorically constructs the last archive in order to establish the “truth” of the archival records she uses as a basis for the stylizied reenactments included in each episode. Building on theories of the archive, as well as histories of radio drama and podcasting, this essay will draw out the tensions that arise from utilizing fictionalized reenactments to represent the “truth” of an archival documents. In particular, the essay intends to offer an understanding of the implications of presenting a fictionalized reenactment as a factual recounting of events in a publicly accessible media format.