Links and Info from Class 11/7/13
Below are the links for our course site, and some of the tools and resources discussed in class on 11/7/13.
Wikipedia:
Class wikipedia page. Please enroll (password: Atwood).
The Year of the Flood Wikipedia page, for review and thoughts about what edits we might make as a group.
Resources:
Bamboo Dirt (for other suggestions)
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Habitual New Media
For those of you who missed Wendy Chun’s talk at Barnard, here is the full video. It’s worth watching. Her presentation style is very engaging and the topic is relevant to our course. Please note that in Professor Chun’s email, she specifically said, “if your students do review [the video], it would be wonderful to get their feedback.”
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Habitual New Media from BCRW Videos on Vimeo.
Blurb about the talk from Barnard Center for Research on Women: “New media technologies provoke both anxiety and hope: anxiety over surveillance and hope for empowerment. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun reveals that these two reactions complement rather than oppose each other by emphasizing how exposure is necessary in order for networks to work. Addressing the key ways that gender plays—and has historically played—into negotiating media exposure, she examines how “habits of privacy” persist and are fostered, often to our detriment. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is professor and chair of modern culture and media at Brown University. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics and Programmed Visions: Software and Memory.”
This lecture was recorded on October 10, 2013 at Barnard College in New York City.
Happy Halloween!
Image found at http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/1992summer/summer1992_Forfreedom.php
As a reminder, we do not have class in person tonight. But here’s what you should be working on:
- A group update blog post (one per group–there is a new category available for these posts)
- A reading response post (one per person–there is also a YOTF category now)
- Two comments on classmates’ blog posts
- Contributions to the mural–what I am seeing so far is great brainstorming
- If you have questions about assignments, ask me
- If you have questions about using mural.ly, ask Emily
Remember to have some fun and eat some candy. But no HelthWyzer products.
Syllabus Adjustments
There are a few adjustments I would like to make to the syllabus.
1) Going forward, I would like a weekly blog update from each group (one post per group–I recommend that you rotate this responsibility) on their thoughts, process, and progress for the final project. You can use this post to get feedback from me, Emily, and your classmates about your project. Tell us your insights, and discuss any stumbling blocks.
2) Along with your reading responses, you should also comment on at least two classmates’ blog posts every week.
3) General questions and discussion items should still be posted in the forum, but since we are meeting weekly going forward, we can turn our energies to blogging and commenting.
4) The wikipedia project is going to be postponed slightly. Details forthcoming!
5) Everyone should contribute to our mural on a regular basis. You have two responsibilities: charting your group’s area and contributing to the areas on major characters and events.
6) Your second reading response–a multimedia response to Year of the Flood–is due on November 14. You may do this project as a group or individually. Keep in mind that a group project should be more ambitious than an individual one! Please let me know your plans by Nov 7. Emily and I are available to consult!
Year of the Flood Project
This evening in class, we will begin our discussion of Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood. I have enjoyed reading the responses you have posted so far.
Tonight, Emily will also do a demonstration of Mural.ly, a collaboration tool we will use to discuss, draft, and plan your final project: a collaborative multimedia response to Year of the Flood. To complete the project, we will break down into teams:
- Chronology and Geography
- God’s Gardeners: Saints, Celebrations, and Beliefs
- Corps, Science, Technology, and Social Systems
Each group will brainstorm about possible responses and media to represent them (timelines? maps? short films? text? what else?). As you read, you should add notes about your area to our class planning mural. We’ll all add notes on major characters to the mural. In each class meeting, each team will give brief report back on their findings. We’ll use our mural help draw connections between ideas and events in the novel, and to determine the architecture and draft components of our final project site. A class wikipedia page is also available for drafting, and eventually, our class will contribute to the Year of the Flood page (and possibly more) on Wikipedia.
By next Thursday, Oct 31, your group should have an established presence on the mural, list out key elements of the novel for your area, and should make a blog post about your ideas for the final project. (One post per group is fine–within your group, you should decide how to allocate that job fairly.)
You should make updates to the mural often in the upcoming weeks. What you post there does not need to be formal; it should serve as a workspace, drafting, and note-gathering area. In class on Nov 7, we will wireframe the final project site together.
Reminder: In-person meeting tonight, 10/17
Just a reminder that we will meet in person tonight at our regular time and place, 6:00-7:30 in 3N. Looking forward to it.
Reading for 10/17
This week’s readings are in the syllabus, but here they are for handy clicking:
Femfuture at Barnard
Femfuture, Redlight Politics
Femfuture Storify
I’d also like to look at #solidarityisforwhiteowomen and here and feel free to comment on this post with more.
Let’s also look at what happened to Danielle Lee last week:
Short Paper #1
As you know, your first short paper is due on Oct 17. Papers are due from all students enrolled for credit.
Your paper should:
- Have a clear thesis statement.
- Draw on textual evidence from at least two of our readings.
- Be about 500-750 words.
A few more tips:
- Your paper may be a personal reflective paper or a more traditional essay, depending on which genre suits your topic and your comfort level.
- You are invited to use one of your blog posts as a launchpad, but if you have a different idea you are hankering to explore, that is also acceptable
- If you are feeling stuck, are not sure what to do, or want to do some brainstorming, please email me or talk to me on gchat. It’s best to ask for this sort of help at least 72 hours before the assignment is due.
Turn your paper in by 6pm on October 17 using the electronic submission form on this site.
Class and Lecture on Oct 10
Hi All,
Emily started a poll to see who is interested in attending a talk at Barnard tomorrow evening in lieu of class (http://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/habitual-new-media-exposing-empowerment/). Because the topic is so well suited to our course, I’d like to let those of you who were interested attend with her, while the rest of us will meet at Macaulay as per usual. Those of you who are going to Barnard (Sophia, Ana, Liz, and Myrna, according to the poll) will tweet and/or blog about the event to keep us all up to date, and the class will do the same to keep you in the loop.
In addition, I would like to propose a face to face meeting next week, Oct 17 at our regular time. I’d like to get a report back about Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s talk and give us some more discussion time. We’ve had some challenging readings and I want to make sure we digest them before we move into the next phase of class.
Please leave a brief comment here so I know you saw this, and contact me by email if you have any concerns.
Video Dialogue Recording, Oct 1, 3:30-4:30
This comes by way of Anne Balsamo at the New School, one of the founders of the FemTechNet DOCC. I am planning to attend; I hope to see some of you there!
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Video Dialogue: Katherine Gibson & Lucy Suchman
Tuesday, October 1, 2013 at 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center (Room I202), Arnhold Hall
55 West 13th Street
Video Dialogue: Katherine Gibson & Lucy Suchman
A conversation between Katherine Gibson, Research Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, andLucy Suchman, professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, United Kingdom.
This event is part of the Video Dialogue Series produced by FemTechNet for the 2013 DOCC (Distributed Online Collaborative Course): Dialogues in Feminism and Technology. The 2013 DOCC is an experiment in an alternative approach to organizing online learning based on feminist pedagogies. It runs from September to November 2013. More than 30 instructors from 14 institutions will participate in this collaborative learning experiment.
Lucy Suchman is Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, and Co-Director of Lancaster’s Centre for Science Studies. Before taking up her present position she spent twenty years as a researcher at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, where she was a founding member and Manager of the Work Practice and Technology area. Her research included ethnographic studies of everyday practices of technology design and use, as well as interdisciplinary and participatory interventions in new technology design. Her recent book, Human-Machine Reconfigurations (Cambridge University Press 2007) investigates the dynamics of human-machine communication.
J.K Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham, feminist political economists and economic geographers based at the University of Western Sydney, Australia and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Their first book, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy(1996) investigates alternative communities economies.
