Dialogues on Feminism and Technology

Instructors: Lisa Cartwright and Elizabeth Losh

Assignments:

One blog comment (200-250 words)
One Wikistorming entry (revision or new entry)
One object (prototype, zine, map, exhibit, assemblage, craft object, etc.)
One boundary object video or audio recording (interview, essay, vlog, digital storytelling, demo, etc. )
One literature review, book review, or annotated syllabus

Schedule

1     Wed Apr 03  Introduction

Balsamo, "Designing Learning"

Bowker and Star, Ch 9 "Categorical Work and Boundary Structures"

2     Wed Apr 10  Posthumanism (Losh)

Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, Prologue and Chapters 1-2

Barad, "Living in a Posthumanist Material World" (in Bits of Life)

3     Tue Apr 16  Tools, Biopolitics (Cartwright)

Clarke and Fujimora, "What Tools? Which Job? Why Right?"

Takeshita, "The IUD as Technoscientific Biopower"

Vora, "Limits of 'Labor'"

4     Wed Apr 24  Feminist ethnographic research methods and ethics

Ethnography and Virtual Worlds, "Ten Myths" (29-51); "Ethics" 129-15)

Viswesweran, "Defining Feminist Ethnography" and "Feminist Ethnography as Failure"

Pink, "Preparing for Sensory Research"

5     Wed May 01  Affect, Animacy, Queer Intelligence  (Cartwright)

Wilson, Affect and Artificial Intelligence (2011), "Shaming AI" and "The Machine Has No Fear"

Chen, Ch 3 "Queer Animality" in Animacies

Halberstam, Ch 1 and 6 in the Queer Art of Failure

6     Wed May 08  Machines, Assemblages (Losh)

Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfigurations (Second Ed)

Hayles, "Desiring Agency"

Licklider, "Man-Computer Symbiosis" (Course Link)

7     Wed May 15  Labor, the Political (Losh)

Losh, Virtualpolitik, Chapters 8 & 10

Sassen, "Digital Networks and the State"

8     Wed May 22  Race, Classification, Boundary structures (Cartwright)

Chen, Introduction, Ch 1 :Mattering Humans" and Ch 5 "Lead's Racial Matters" in Animacies

Bowker and Star, Ch 6 "The Case of Race Classification"

Magnet, When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity Ch 1-4 and conclusion

Nakamura, "Economics of Digital Production in East Asia" and Now Visual Culture talk

9     Wed May 29  Systems, Information (Losh)  

Flanagan, "Playing House" and "Critical Computer Games" (Course Links)

Ludica, "Playing Dress-up" and "Hegemony of Play"         

10    Wed Jun 05  Life, Matter, Media (Cartwright)

Kember and Zylinska, "Mediation and the Vitality of Media" in Life After New Media