IDS 81660
As we become more reliant on and are required to use technologies in our work and lives in the 21st century, how may we center justice? Towards intentional practice and praxis, this course will consider questions of accessibility and publics, through the autoethnographic lens of students’ own research projects. We will think through questions such as: What is the importance of technology equity and access, in this moment and in the future? Why should we care? Many examples exist of the ways that technologies may help or hinder us and our communities, but how may we resist preordained technological futures and imagine more just technologies and a more equitable world?
Course material will be sourced collectively and may include pieces by: Audrey Watters, Data & Society, Jessica Marie Johnson, Kelly Baker Josephs, The Library Freedom Project, Roopika Risam, Ruha Benjamin, Safiya Noble, and Shalini Kantayya.
Instructors
Javiela Evangelista is an Associate Professor in the African American Studies Department. As a public anthropologist she engages in participatory research that counters inequalities, at the intersections of citizenship and racialization in the Caribbean and the African Diaspora. Evangelista is developing her book manuscript, an ethnographic analysis of the largest case of mass statelessness in the western hemisphere, the contemporary denationalization of Dominicans of Haitian descent in Dominican Republic. Support has been received by Harvard University’s Mahindra Humanities Center, Andrew Mellon Foundation, and Social Science Research Council. Her work has been featured at the Venice Biennale and in the Publication of Afro-Latin/American Research Association (PALARA), National Political Science Review and Interdisciplinary Team Teaching (Palgrave). She is a founding member of the collective We Are All Dominican organizing against statelessness.
Maura Smale is the executive chief librarian of the Graduate Center. She was previously the chief librarian and a professor at City Tech, where she worked with library faculty and staff to empower and support City Tech students, faculty, and staff in their academic pursuits. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from New York University and an MLIS from Pratt Institute. She served as project director for the U.S. Department of Education Title V grant-funded project A Living Laboratory and co-director of the City Tech OpenLab. She is also a member of the steering committee of the CUNY Games Network. Her research interests include undergraduate academic culture, game-based learning, open educational technologies, scholarly communications, and critical librarianship.
