This seminar course is a survey on the work done on thinking about the politics and ethics of design and technology, particularly with regards to the politics of race and culture. Drawing from a range of fields and disciplines that study cultural and racial difference in nuanced ways: anthropology, cultural studies, Black studies, settler-colonial and indigenous studies, and postcolonial and decolonial theory, we will put discourses from these disciplines into conversation with discourses from fields that deal with materializing new ways of living and being via technology like art, design, architecture, and computer science.
The first half of the course will give us some foundations in thinking about the politics of difference – particularly racial and cultural – considering different approaches to understanding and dealing with issues of domination. The second half of the course will then move on to discourses on and around design and technology. We will have readings that deal with subjects and contexts outside of the United States and Europe, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia.
Given that this is a Masters-level seminar, students are expected to read around 50-60 pages per week for the course, as well as do a considerable amount of reading and writing for assignments. The course will cover secondary research skills, including archival research, and students will be expected to write a ~5000 word term paper.
Instructor: Dr. Ahmed Ansari