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Age of Fracture Review

synthesizing fragmentation.

My review of Daniel Rodgers’ Age of Fracture for American Political Thought, Spring 2014 issue:

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PDF (download): Kramer Age of Fracture Review APT.

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Published on May 05, 2014 17:07

Take Note

Note taking is a way of living. On a good day, I think I’m touching some kind of truth about everyday life. On a bad day, I just think it’s insane. — Alice Goffman, sociologist, in Alison Schuessler, “Fieldwork of Total Immersion,” New York Times, 29 April 2014.

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Published on April 30, 2014 14:02

Approaching Digital History Seminar

methods seminar, northwestern university, spring 2014.

APPROACHING HISTORY

Overview:

How are digital technologies altering the study of history? What are the new possibilities for digital history? What are the new problems? In this seminar, we will explore new methods, theories, and practices of digital history. Students will probe the field through readings, seminar discussions, and online blogging. We will also learn through doing by working both individually and collectively on a set of digital history projects. No computer programming skills are prerequisites for this course, just an eagerness to dive in and explore where the digital and the historical meet. Students will be evaluated based on robust participation in course meetings and online blog, completion of reading assignments, three major blog assignments, additional smaller assignments, and a larger final project that applies digital history methods to a historical topic of interest for each student (this can be a research project or topic of curiosity for undergraduates, an analysis of existing digital history projects and approaches, or, for graduate students, a project that centers on preparation for comprehensive exams or, perhaps most productively, becomes a digital historical component of dissertation research. This course is open to both graduate and undergraduate students.

Course Info:

History 393-0-31 (38107)

Tuesday and Thursday, 3:30-4:50pm

University Hall 112

Course website:

https://curricula.mmlc.northwestern.edu/digitalhistoryseminar

Instructor:

Dr. Michael J. Kramer

Visiting Assistant Professor, History and American Studies

Co-Director, Northwestern University Digital Humanities Laboratory (www.nudhl.net)

Contact:

Office hours: Thursday, 2-3pm, Harris Hall 212.

Schedule:

WEEK 1

Tu 4/1
Introduction: What Is Digital History?

Th 4/3
Digital History at the Cutting Edge: Case Study 1

Ben Schmidt, “Reading digital sources: a case study in ship’s logs,” and other posts, starting with “Data narratives and structural histories: Melville, Maury, and American whaling,” Sapping Attention, 15 November 2012, http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/....

WEEK 2

Mo 4/7
Blog post

What is your experience of digital technologies? If you could develop a digital history project in this course, either reviewing existing works or pursuing your own independent research (in connection with research in another course or as a stand-alone project), what would you be interested in doing? Write a short, informal post of roughly 300-500 words and post on our “Spring 2014″ website.

Tu 4/8
Digital History Methodology Debates 1: Overviews

Douglas Seefeldt and William G. Thomas, “What Is Digital History?,” Perspectives on History, May 2009, http://www.historians.org/publication...
Various authors, “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History,” Journal of American History 95, 2 (September 2008), http://www.journalofamericanhistory.o....
William G. Thomas III, “What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities,” History and The Making of Modern America, 15 October 2011, http://railroads.unl.edu/blog/?p=616.
W. Caleb McDaniel, “Why I Study Digital History,” 31 August 2012, http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/why-study-di....
Trevor Owens, “Discovery and Justification are Different: Notes on Science-ing the Humanities,” 19 November 2012, http://www.trevorowens.org/2012/11/di....
Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty, “Introduction” (especially the “changing the culture of history writing” section), in Writing History in the Digital Age: A Born-Digital, Open-Review Volume, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/in....

Th 4/10
Digital History Methodology Debates 2: The Hermeneutics of Data

Trevor Owens, “Defining Data for Humanists: Text, Artifact, Information, or Evidence?,” Journal of Digital Humanities 1, 1 (April 2012), http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org....
Frederick W. Gibbs and Trevor J. Owens, “The Hermeneutics of Data and Historical Writing (Spring 2012 version),” in Writing History in the Digital Age: A Born-Digital, Open-Review Volume, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/da....
Stephen Ramsay, “The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around; or What You Do with a Million Books,” 17 April 2010, http://www.playingwithhistory.com/wp-....
Tim Sherratt, “Small stories in a big data world,” 20 November 2012, http://discontents.com.au/small-stori....
Tim Hitchcock, “Big Data for Dead People: Digital Readings and the Conundrums of Positivism,” 9 December 2013, http://historyonics.blogspot.com/2013....

WEEK 3

Mon 4/14
Assignment #1 due, upload to Class Blog by 11:59pm.Write a 500-1000 word review of Ben Schmidt’s digital history project on whaling logs in the 19th century. What is Schmidt’s argument? What is his evidence? What is his method? To whom (what other scholars and thinkers) is he directing the project and how does he communicate his position to them (you might draw upon the methodological overview readings we have done thus far)? First, explain in your own words what Schmidt does in the project. Then, be sure to take your reader through what you take to be the key sections in Schmidt’s blog posts (what materials? Quote or paraphrase them and cite them)? Finally, develop a critique: what is convincing to you and why? What troubles you about the project and why? Be sure to include an opening introductory paragraph that culminates in a fully developed thesis statement. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence and transitions to the next paragraph. Your final paragraph should be a conclusion that reiterates your thesis in a new way and adds a final “punch” to your review. Refer to the guidelines on writing your blog post for rubric and more information.

Tu 4/15
Digital History Methodology Debates 3: It’s All About the Stuff?

Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,” American Historical Review 108, 3 (June 2003): 735-762, http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history....
Tim Sherratt, “It’s all about the stuff: collections, interfaces, power and people,” 1 December 2011, http://discontents.com.au/its-all-abo....
Kenneth Goldsmith, “Archiving Is the New Folk Art,” Harriet: A Poetry Blog, 19 April 2011, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harri....
Lauren Coats and Gabrielle Dean, “Archives Remixed: Undergraduates in the Archives,” Archive Journal 2 (Fall 2012), http://www.archivejournal.net/issue/2....

Th 4/17
Digital History at the Cutting Edge: Case Study 2

Tim Sherratt, “The Real Face of White Australia,” http://invisibleaustralians.org/faces/.
Tim Sherratt, “Exposing the archives of White Australia,” 11 March 2013, http://discontents.com.au/exposing-th....
The Quilt Index, http://www.quiltindex.org.
Amanda Grace Sikarskie, “Citizen Scholars: Facebook and the Co-Creation of Knowledge,” in Writing History in the Digital Age: A Born-Digital, Open-Review Volume, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/pu....
Emily Thompson, Design by Scott Mahoy, “The Roaring ‘Twenties: an interactive exploration of the historical soundscape of New York City,” Fall 2013, http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/index....

Optional:

Ed Ayers, “The Valley of the Shadow” and other Projects, Virginia Center for Digital History Projects, http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/index.ph....
Vincent Brown, principal investigator, “Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative,” http://revolt.axismaps.com.

WEEK 4

Mo 4/21
Blog post

Student presentation preview rough draft. What is it that you wish for us to explore at your student presentation session? Write a short, informal post of roughly 300-500 words and post on our “Spring 2014″ website. Include an overview of the questions about which you are curious, your description of the project or problem or topic you wish to address, citations, things you want us to look at, etc.

Tu 4/22
Digital History Methodology Debates 4: Time and Space, Narrative and Database

Lev Manovich, “Database as Symbolic Form,” Convergence 5: 80 (1999), http://con.sagepub.com/content/5/2/80 (available through NU Library database).
Tara McPherson, “Introduction: Media Studies and the Digital Humanities,” Cinema Journal 48, 2 (Winter 2009): 119-123, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cj/summa... (available through NU Library database).
David Armitage and Jo Guldi, “The Return of the Longue Durée: An Anglo-American Perspective,” http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/armi....
Richard White, “What Is Spatial History?,” Spatial History Lab: Working paper; Submitted 1 February 2010, http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatial....
N. Katherine Hayles, “Introduction,” “Third Interlude: Narrative and Database: Digital Media as Forms,” How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012, 1-18, 171-247, available on e-reserves.

Th 4/24
Digital History at the Cutting Edge: Case Study 3

Richard White, “Shaping the West,” http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatial....
Richard White, Excerpts from Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: WW Norton, 2011), available on e-reserves

WEEK 5

Mon 4/28
Assignment #2 due, upload to Class Blog by 11:59pm.

Develop a 1000 word review that compares Richard White’s digital project “Shaping the West” to the excerpts from his book, Railroaded. Use specific examples from each to develop an argument about the possibilities and problems of digital history. What is different about each presentation? Where do they intersect? What do you take to be the “argument” being made in the book and in the digital project? Are they similar, different? Does one make more of an argument than the other? If so why or why not? How does White present his “data,” evidence, and interpretation in each case? Refer to the guidelines on writing your blog post for rubric and more information.

Tu 4/29
No Class: Time for preparing presentations

Th 5/1
Student selected topic

WEEK 6

Tu 5/6
Student selected topic

Th 5/8
Student selected topic

WEEK 7

Tu 5/13
Student selected topic

Th 5/15
Student selected topic

WEEK 8

Tu 5/20
Student selected topic

Th 5/22
Student selected topic

WEEK 9

Mon 5/26
Assignment #3 due, upload to Class Blog by 11:59pm.

Develop a 500-100 word review of a digital history project, post, tool, or essay of your choice. Refer to the guidelines on writing your blog post for rubric and more information.

Tu 5/27
No Class: research time

Th 5/29
Wrap Up: Digital History Problems and Possibilities

FINALFri 6/13
Assignment #4 due, upload to Class Blog by 11:59pm.

Your final assignment should be a longer, 1500-2000 word exploration of a topic of your choice. It can be a multimedia essay or a more conventional text-based essay. You might focus on one of the following topics: (1) a digital project related to original research on a historical topic (or connected to an essay you are working on in another history course; (2) an extended review and assessment of a set of digital history tools, projects, essays, or posts; (3) an exploration of a particular theme in the emergent field of digital history. Refer to the guidelines on writing your blog post for rubric and more information.

Expectations:

Attendance: Students are expected to attend all meetings. If a student misses more than three meetings, the instructor reserves the right to issue a failing grade.

Assignments: Students must complete all assignments to pass the course. The assignments consist of blog posts, three assignments, and a final longer publication, either in a conventional text form or more experimental multimedia format. These are designed to be fun, but they are also demanding—and perhaps for some, frustrating. Please be aware that historical analysis is not a science in the strict sense of the term. There is no purely objective, machine-like way to develop interpretation within the traditions of historical meaning-making. This means there is not some perfectly standardized way to evaluate your work. There is, however, a craft to this mode of thinking, writing, and reasoning. It is improvement of this craft that these assignments and evaluations can help you. Your task is to develop effective and compelling evidence-based arguments informed by historical awareness and thinking. These will often work by applying your judgment and assessment to consider how things connect or contrast to each other: how do different aspects you are studying relate each other? And most importantly, why?

Rather than test the breadth of your absorption of course materials, the assignments test your ability to wield knowledge of materials in the course (lectures, readings, viewings) in order to mount effective and compelling evidence-based arguments. If this mode of evaluation is not to your tastes, I recommend that you do not take the course.

Your assignments must be well written in order to communicate a convincing, compelling, and precise argument that is driven by our description and analysis of meaning in materials drawn from the course (and other sources if needed). Evaluations are based on the following rubric:

(1) the presence of an articulated and compelling argument (a thesis statement, see number 4 below for more)
(2) the presence of evidence
(3) the compelling and precise connection of evidence to argument by comparing and contrasting details and their significance to the argument of the essay
(4) an effective opening introduction that uses (a) a “hook” to (b) frame a precise and compelling question in order to (c) articulate a thesis statement that addresses the question and characterizes how and why it matters to our understanding of the historical topic at hand
(5) logical flow and grace of prose: the presence of an introduction that ends with a thesis statement (see number 4), clear topic sentences for each paragraph of the essay, the presence of effective transitions from one part of the essay to the next, and a compelling conclusion that restates the thesis in new language and closes with a memorable sense of why the thesis matters to our historical understanding
(6) where applicable, proper citations in footnote or endnote form (your choice) as per Chicago Manual of Style guidelines (http://libguides.northwestern.edu/con...).

If you have any questions about evaluation in the course geared at helping you access and develop the craft of historical analysis, please speak with the instructor or teaching assistants to discuss further. Assignments that students hand in after the due date without explicit plans for an extension arranged with the instructor and teaching assistant prior to the deadline are deducted three (3) points per day.

Student Selected Topic: Each of you will lead a discussion of a digital history-related topic for half of a seminar meeting (plan on 35 minutes so we can get a little break in the middle). Your task is to develop:

(1) a discussion focus: it can be thematically based (e.g., I want to develop a digital historical component to my senior thesis or another research paper, here are ideas and questions I have; or, what kind of digital history is being developed already about the “roaring twenties,” etc.); it can focus on a particular tool or platform (e.g., how are people using “Scalar” as a platform; how are people using certain kinds of “text-mining” tools; timelines; visualization tools; or any other tool or platform you encounter); or it can focus on a methodological issue (e.g., what are the stakes of publishing multimedia history?; what is the history of “cliometrics” and why is it returning, in a sense, through digital history?; what happens to questions of race, gender, class, region, or another category of analysis in the digital framework?).
(2) a set of materials for us to examine before your discussion. What’s the “stuff” you want us to investigate to prepare for your discussion?
(3) a set of questions you would like us to think about for your discussion. Help guide us toward what you are wondering about or interested in.

History Department Writing Center: The History Department Writing Center is available for students working on your assignments. It is not merely for students having difficulty with their writing (we all have difficulty with our writing for it is difficult to write well). It is for students at any level or stage of the writing process: reading evidence, “brainstorming,” generating an argument, connecting argument to evidence, structuring paragraphs and transitions, and improving style and tone. Students wishing to contact the History Department Writing Center should email historywriting@northwestern.edu.

Academic Integrity: All Weinberg College and Northwestern policies concerning plagiarism and academic dishonesty are strictly enforced in this course. The instructor also reserves the right to assign a failing grade for the course if a student is found to have violated college or university policy concerning academic integrity. See http://www.weinberg.northwestern.edu/... for more details.

Special Needs: Students with special needs and disabilities that have been declared and documented through the Northwestern Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) should meet with the instructor to discuss any specific accommodations. For further information, see the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) website: http://www.northwestern.edu/disability.

Evaluation:

Participation: 40%

General discussion contributions: 10%
Blog posts, comments (in addition to assignments): 10%
Student-led discussion session: 20%

Assignment 1: 10%

Assignment 2: 15%

Assignment 3: 15%

Final: 20%

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Published on April 21, 2014 11:16

Aesthetic Institute of Chicago

new branch open.

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Published on April 16, 2014 19:11

The Challenge of the Citizen-Scholar Spring 2014 Edition

Civic Engagement and Graduate Education Seminar

Fall 2014 | CFS 495-0 Section 20

Time and Place

Wednesdays 10:00am-1:00pm

Center for Civic Engagement Seminar Room, 1813 Hinman

Instructor

Dr. Michael Kramer

mjk@northwestern.edu | twitter: @kramermj | www.culturerover.com

Harris Hall 212, Office hours: Thursday, 2-3pm or by appointment

Seminar Description

What does it mean to be a citizen-scholar? This seminar probes the question of connecting specialized academic research to broader audiences from multiple perspectives. We explore both historical models and contemporary debates as we think across the humanities, arts, social sciences, natural sciences, and applied fields of design, engineering, law, journalism, non-profit work, and business. The course pays particularly close attention to the new opportunities and challenges of public scholarship in the digital age: how might the digital offer new ways of moving between academia, specific communities or institutions, and conceptualizations of a broader public? Students contribute weekly posts and comments to our collective blog, maintain a collective Twitter feed at #nugeo, and complete a final, longer “white paper” that relates to the particular internship completed during the quarter. The seminar convenes in connection with the Graduate Engagement Opportunities Program at the Northwestern Center for Civic Engagement.

Assignment Guidelines

You are going to write a lot in this course, but your writing will often be different than the typical research essay. Instead, we want to use the course to investigate our writing styles more closely in terms of how we can connect specialized academic knowledge to broader audiences. What does it mean to “bridge” this divide? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities?

You might think of your audience not only as your classmates and me, but also as a broader readership of interested people. You might consider how those at your placement site might respond to the readings and your responses, or you might imagine your audience as others who also wish to pursue a civic engagement internship and enroll in the seminar but are unable to do this term. In other words, try to write clearly and precisely, describing what you are reading and thinking about as well as offering your interpretation of materials and experiences. Be honest. Take seriously that your words and comments matter, that others rely on them to be substantive, civil, and judicious. Don’t be afraid to not understand things. Ask questions. Take a chance. Model what it means to write in the space between being a scholar with a developing expertise in a field of specialized research and a citizen-at-large, an equal with others who also has something distinctive to say.

1. Weekly blog posts. We will be using a WordPress blog for our course. Each week I will ask you to post a response to the readings and an additional post. Be sure to add the proper category to your post and add tags.

2. Weekly responses. Each week I wish for you to respond to at least one other student’s post. What did it make you think about? What kinds of constructive criticism can you offer? Be substantive!

3. Weekly follow up comment. Sometimes revelations emerge after we read or write something and have some time to reflect on it. Therefore I ask you to write a short follow up comment to your previous week’s post. What has changed for you since you wrote the post? What remains the same? Be substantive!

4. Twitter. I would like each of you to create a Twitter account. It can be an existing one or you can create a separate one specifically for this course. We will use Twitter to share ideas, thoughts, information, and more with a broader community of people interested in where academic and public scholarship meet. We will also consider the problems of using Twitter in this way: how does it extend scholarly and civic engagement? What are its shortcomings? Please use the hashtag #nugeo so that we can compile tweets for the course. My “handle” is @kramermj if you are trying to find me on Twitter.

5. Final essay. A more sustained final paper or project—roughly 10-15 pages—analyzing or contributing to the substantive, public work of the internship or field study is due at the end of the quarter. Ideally, the paper or project can also be a kind of “white paper” that is of direct value and assistance to the community organization or public entity with which you are interning. But it can also review the analytical or research work completed or connect your research interests to your internship in other creative ways.

Seminar Grades

Grades for the seminar will be based on class participation (30%), weekly assignments (40%), and the final project (30%). The experiential work done in the internship will not be graded as such, however students must perform their weekly hours at their internship and stay in good standing with the host organization for seminar credit to be earned.

Book to Purchase

• C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, with a new afterword by Todd Gitlin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), available at online bookstores and through NU Reserves.

• All other readings online at either Blackbord (courses.northwestern.edu) or respective link.

Weekly Schedule

4/2 Introductions

4/9 Getting Engaged

• Julie Ellison, “The Humanities and the Public Soul,” in Practising Public Scholarship: Experiences and Possibilities Beyond the Academy, ed. Katharyne Mitchell (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 113-121, see Blackboard.

• George J. Sanchez, “Crossing Figueroa: The Tangled Web of Diversity and Democracy,” with Responses, Imagining America Foreseeable Futures Position Papers #4, 2005, http://imaginingamerica.org/fg-item/the-tangled-web-of-diversity-and-democracy/?parent=520.

• Jenny Pickerell, “The Surprising Sense of Hope,” Practising Public Scholarship: Experiences and Possibilities Beyond the Academy, ed. Katharyne Mitchell (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 132-137, see Blackboard.

• Imagining America Page Fellows blog posts from Fall 2013, http://imaginingamerica.org/news-and-media/blog/.

Blogging:

A. Blog assignment due 4/7:

a. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your academic research and your civic engagement work this quarter.

b. Develop a 2-3 paragraph response to one of the readings in which you seek to explain it to a friend who is not in academia. What is the argument of the essay? Can you paraphrase it? What do you see as the key words or phrases in the essay? Why? What do you agree with or disagree with and, most importantly, why?

B. Comment due 4/8.

C. Followup due 4/11.

4/16 Sociological Imagination 1: C. Wright Mills as a Case Study

• C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1-99.

Blogging

A. Blog assignment due 4/15:

a. Develop a 2-3 paragraph response to this week’s readings.

b. As Mills does with the paragraph of Talcott Parsons, select a paragraph from your favorite article or book in your academic speciality and translate it into prose that is accessible to a general audience. Quote the original in your post and, as Mills does, follow with your translation.

B. Comment due 4/18.

C. Followup due 4/21.

4/23 Sociological Imagination 2: C. Wright Mills as a Case Study

• Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 100-228.

Blogging

A. Blog assignment due 4/21:

a. The Sociological Imagination has just been republished. How does it hold up? Develop a short book review of the book. You may incorporate observations from your internship and materials from the other readings about Mills. But the review should connect Mills’s work from 1959 to contemporary times. What still matters about the book specifically and what doesn’t?

B. Comment due 4/25.

C. Followup due 4/28.

4/30 Chicago

• Chicago: City of the Century DVD, see Blackboard. More at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/.

• Harold Washington This American Life Special, http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/84/Harold.

• Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995; reprint, New York: Broadway Books, 2004), 133-206, see Blackboard.

• Mary Pattillo, “Negotiating Blackness, for Richer or for Poorer,” Ethnography 4, 1 (2003): 61–93, see Blackboard.

Blogging

A. Blog assignment due 4/28:

a. Connect a specific aspect of the materials for this week to your own reflections on Chicago.

b. Write a brief preview of what you plan to do for your final project in the course.

B. Comment due 5/2.

C. Followup due 5/5.

5/7 Going Digital

• Henry Farrell, “The Tech Intellectuals,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 30, Fall 2013, http://www.democracyjournal.org/30/the-tech-intellectuals.php?page=all.

• Diana Taylor, “Save As… Knowledge and Transmission in the Age of Digital Technologies,” Imagining America Foreseeable Futures Position Papers #10, 2010, http://imaginingamerica.org/fg-item/save-as-knowledge-and-transmission-in-the-age-of-digital-technologies/?parent=520.

• Axel Honneth, “Idiosyncrasy as a Tool of Knowledge: Social Criticism in the Age of the Normalized Intellectual,” Transformations of the Public Sphere, http://publicsphere.ssrc.org/honneth-social-criticism-in-the-age-of-the-normalized-intellectual/.

Browse the following websites. Pick one to discuss in your blog post this week:

• Mukurtu, http://www.mukurtu.org

• DH Press, http://digitalinnovation.unc.edu/projects/dhpress/

• The Community Tool Box, http://ctb.ku.edu/en/default.aspx

• History Harvest, http://historyharvest.unl.edu

• Freedom’s Ring: King’s I Have a Dream Speech, http://freedoms-ring.org/

• Prison Valley: The Prison Industry, http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/?lang=en

• The Knotted Line, http://knottedline.com

• Public Sphere Forum, http://publicsphere.ssrc.org

• The Chicago Arts Archive, http://sixtyinchesfromcenter.org/archive/

• Digital Media and Learning, MacArthur Foundation, http://www.macfound.org/programs/learning/

• Geographical Perspectives: A Geographer’s Thoughts on Business, Real Estate, and Education, http://www.justinholman.com

• Digital Portobello, http://digitalportobelo.org.

Blogging

A. Blog assignment due 5/5:

a. What can the digital offer to civic engagement by scholars? What problems does it raise for the citizen-scholar, for the expert, for conceptualizations of the public? Write a 2-3 paragraph response to these prompts that draws specifically upon your sense of the readings for this week’s seminar.

b. Write 1-3 paragraph reflection about your placement internship thus far. What are you noticing? What has been exciting? What is frustrating you? If you had to start writing your final essay today, what would its topic be?

B. Comment due 5/9.

C. Followup due 5/12.

5/14 Citizen-Scholar and the State

• Theda Skocpol, “The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy,” Social Science History 21, 4 (Winter, 1997): 455-479, see Blackboard.

• Tony Judt, “What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?,” New York Review of Books, 17 December 2009, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/dec/17/what-is-living-and-what-is-dead-in-social-democrac/?pagination=false.

• Rebecca Solnit, “The Uses of Disaster: Notes on Bad Weather and Good Government,” Harper’s, 1 October 2005, 31-37, see Blackboard.

Blogging

A. Blog assignment due 5/12:

a. What role should the state play in civil society? How should the expert-scholar relate to the state and those in political (or economic for that matter!) power? What about to other institutions, from corporations to non-profit associations to the university itself—how should the citizen-scholar position herself or himself in relation to institutions? Develop a 2-3 paragraph response that draws upon this week’s readings with specificity.

B. Comment due 5/16.

C. Followup due 5/19.

5/21 Conclusions

Blogging

A. Blog assignment due 5/19:

a. Write a short profile of someone at your internship. It can be in the form of an interview, an essay, a podcast, a videocast, or another form that you think best expresses your conversation with this person.

b. Develop an update of your final project plans.

B. Comment due 5/23.

C. Followup due 5/26.

A Few More Notes

Academic integrity

Be sure to comply with all academic integrity policies at Northwestern: http://www.northwestern.edu/provost/policies/academic-integrity/index.html. Be aware that the instructor is required to report any suspected instances of academic dishonesty. The instructor also reserves the right to assign a failing grade for the course if a student is found to have violated university policy concerning academic integrity.

Special Needs

Students with special needs and disabilities that have been declared and documented through the Northwestern Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) should meet with the instructor to discuss any specific accommodations. For further information, see the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) website:http://www.northwestern.edu/disability.

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Published on April 14, 2014 10:20

Dancing Around Climate Change

the seldoms, exit disclaimer: science and fiction ahead @ northwestern university marjorie ward marshall ballroom theater, 4/24-27/2014, evening and matinee performances; special free performance with climate change experts @ ryan auditorium, technological institute, 4/22/14, 7:30pm.

Tickets available here: http://theseldoms.brownpapertickets.com.

April 24, 25, 26 at 8pm

April 27 at 2pm

Pre-performance talk with Artistic Director Carrie Hanson and dramaturg/historian Michael J. Kramer Friday at 6:45pm. Post-performance talk on Saturday.

“Exit Disclaimer: Science and Fiction Ahead” is an hour-long dance theater work that surveys our rancorous, divisive national debate about climate change, and its divergent positions ranging from denial, skepticism and indifference to urgency. “Exit Disclaimer” premiered at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago in 2012, and toured to Taipei, Taiwan.

Defined by “inventive, unsentimental and arresting contemporary choreography” (Chicago Tribune), Exit Disclaimer is less about climate change itself, but the discourse surrounding it. Hanson is interested in how opinions are formed about this pressing issue in which the science is complex and where there exist loud counter-arguments by skeptics and deniers, making a difficult issue more incomprehensible. At its premiere, The Chicago Reader said, “Hanson’s satirical, deadly serious piece bursts a lot of bubbles on a high-stakes subject.”

The Seldoms Artistic Director Carrie Hanson, one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2012, has made over twenty-five original works for the company that have been performed nationally and in Germany and Russia. Recently her focus has shifted to issue-based work, such as the critically acclaimed “Stupormarket”(2011), a dance theater piece about the economic meltdown. She finds satisfaction in such projects for the inherent difficulty of making dance speak to these subjects, and because they require research and consideration of situations beyond body/movement/performance. Hanson was a 2005 Chicago Dancemaker’s Forum Lab Artist, has twice been awarded an Illinois Arts Council Choreographic Fellowship, and received a Ruth Page Award for Performance. In 2009 and 2011, she was named by New City as one of “The Players: 50 People Who Really Perform for Chicago”.

Mikhail Fiksel is a composer, sound designer, musician and a dj. His stage work includes composition and/or sound design for Dallas Theatre Center, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Geffen Playhouse, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Second Stage Theatre as well as Chicago institutions including Lucky Plush, DanceWorks Chicago, The Goodman Theatre, Writers Theatre, Redmoon, Victory Gardens, Timeline and Albany Park Theatre Project. He is a recipient of the Joseph Jefferson, Lucille Lortel, AfterDark and The Garland awards, and was recently honored with the Michael Maggio Emerging Designer Award. He is an ensemble member of Strawdog and 2nd Story, an artistic associate with Teatro Vista, Collaboraction and Redmoon, a resident artist with Albany Park Theatre Project and on the faculty at Loyola University Chicago. www.mikhailfiksel.com

In their eleventh season, The Seldoms are alchemists of artistic media who believe that movementalong with image, sound, text and locationcan expand action and environment into larger restless visions. Since 2001, the company has performed widely in Chicago, notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, and at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, at national venues including Joyce SoHo in New York, and internationally in Russia, Canada and Taiwan. The Seldoms has a history of presenting nontraditional performance to audiences; they have designed major multi-disciplinary site-specific performances in a variety of spaces including industrial, retail, historic, and outdoor sites. The company has built a reputation for bold, unusual collaborations and a full exploration of the other media supporting dance, working intensely with visual artists, architects, composers and fashion designers. www.theseldoms.org.

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Published on April 05, 2014 08:58

The Computerized Society: Digital Culture in the United States Since World War II

syllabus for spring 2014 lecture course.

The Computerized Society: in the United States Since World War II

Dr. Michael J. Kramer

Visiting Assistant Professor, History and American Studies

Co-Director, Northwestern University Digital Humanities Laboratory, www.nudhl.net

The scenario of the computerization of the most highly developed societies allows us to spotlight…certain aspects of the transformation of knowledge and its effects on public power and civil institutions—effects it would be difficult to perceive from other points of view. — Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 1979

Overview:

How have computers altered American life since World War II? In this course, we will treat technology not as deterministic, but rather as a powerful social phenomenon embedded in economic, political, and cultural struggles. We will examine the history of the computer from multiple perspectives to contextualize the relationship between people and computational machines during the last 70 years: we will look at factors of race, gender, class, and region; we will consider the relationship of the computer to militarism and the Cold War; we will investigate the computer in relation to issues of commerce and culture, politics and justice; we will consider both the national and transnational contexts for digital culture; and we will study the computer as both an industrially-produced machine and the key material product underlying what has become known as the postindustrial “information society.” Students will attend lectures, read intensively, watch films, explore online materials, participate in discussion sections, and complete four writing assignments that emphasize the craft of evidence-based historical interpretation and analysis.

Course Info:

History 330-42 (32766)

Harris Hall L07

Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30-1:50pm

Discussion sections on selected Fridays, see course website and/or Caesar for details.

Course website:

NUCanvas, https://northwestern.instructure.com/....

Instructor:

Dr. Michael J. Kramer

Visiting Assistant Professor, History and American Studies

Co-Director, Northwestern University Digital Humanities Laboratory (www.nudhl.net)

Contact:

Office hours: Thursday, 2-3pm, Harris Hall 212.

Teaching Assistant:

Kevin Baker

History Department

Contact:

Office hours: Monday, 1:45-3:45pm, Harris 219.

Required Material:

Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray, Nathan Ensmenger, and Jeffrey R. Yost, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, Third Edition (New York: Westview Press, 2014).
Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).
Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet (New York: HarperCollins, 2012).
Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (And  Why We Should Worry) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Vintage, 2010).
Additional articles, films, and websites on course website and/or on reserve at NU Library, see our Canvas course page, https://northwestern.instructure.com/....

Expectations:

Attendance: Students are expected to attend all lectures and discussion sections. If a student misses more than three meetings, the instructor reserves the right to issue a failing grade.

Reading/Viewing: This course features roughly 150-250 required pages of reading a week. A number of documentary and fictional films as well as websites are also part of the required materials.

Assignments: Students must complete all assignments to pass the course. These are designed to be fun, but they are also demanding—and perhaps for some, frustrating. Please be aware that historical analysis and musical analysis are not a science in the strict sense of the term. There is no purely objective, machine-like way to develop interpretation within the traditions of historical or musical meaning-making (especially in a course that focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of the digital machine!). This means there is not some perfectly standardized way to evaluate your work. There is, however, a craft to this mode of thinking, writing, and reasoning. It is that craft that we will use evaluations to help you access, participate in, and improve your abilities. Your task is to develop effective and compelling evidence-based arguments informed by historical awareness and thinking. These will often work by applying your judgment and assessment to consider how things connect or contrast to each other: how do different or similar songs, performers, genres, historical moments, geographic locations, etc., relate to each other? And most importantly, why?

Rather than test the breadth of your absorption of course materials, the assignments test your ability to wield knowledge of materials in the course (lectures, readings, viewings) in order to mount effective and compelling evidence-based arguments. If this mode of evaluation is not to your tastes, I recommend that you do not take the course.

Your assignments must be well written in order to communicate a convincing, compelling, and precise argument that is driven by our description and analysis of meaning in materials drawn from the course (and other sources if needed). We evaluate assignments based on the following rubric:

(1) the presence of an articulated and compelling argument (a thesis statement, see number 4 below for more)

(2) the presence of evidence

(3) the compelling and precise connection of evidence to argument by comparing and contrasting details and their significance to the argument of the essay

(4) an effective opening introduction that uses (a) a “hook” to (b) frame a precise and compelling question in order to (c) articulate a thesis statement that addresses the question and characterizes how and why it matters to our understanding of the historical topic at hand

(5) logical flow and grace of prose: the presence of an introduction that ends with a thesis statement (see number 4), clear topic sentences for each paragraph of the essay, the presence of effective transitions from one part of the essay to the next, and a compelling conclusion that restates the thesis in new language and closes with a memorable sense of why the thesis matters to our historical understanding

(6) proper citations in footnote or endnote form (your choice) as per Chicago Manual of Style guidelines (http://libguides.northwestern.edu/con...).

If you have any questions about evaluation in the course geared at helping you access and develop the craft of historical and musical analysis, please speak with the instructor or teaching assistants to discuss further.

History Department Writing Center: The History Department Writing Center is available for students working on your assignments. It is not merely for students having difficulty with their writing (we all have difficulty with our writing for it is difficult to write well). It is for students at any level or stage of the writing process: reading evidence, “brainstorming,” generating an argument, connecting argument to evidence, structuring paragraphs and transitions, and improving style and tone. Students wishing to contact the History Department Writing Center should email historywriting@northwestern.edu.

Academic Integrity: All Weinberg College and Northwestern policies concerning plagiarism and academic dishonesty are strictly enforced in this course. The instructor also reserves the right to assign a failing grade for the course if a student is found to have violated college or university policy concerning academic integrity. See http://www.weinberg.northwestern.edu/... for more details.

Special Needs: Students with special needs and disabilities that have been declared and documented through the Northwestern Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) should meet with the instructor to discuss any specific accommodations. For further information, see the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) website: http://www.northwestern.edu/disability.

Evaluation:

Class and discussion section attendance and participation: 40%.

Assignment 1: 10%

Assignment 2: 15%

Assignment 3: 15%

Final: 20%

Schedule:

WEEK 1

Tu 4/1
Introduction: The Computerized Society

Th 4/3
Introduction 2: Early Adventures in Programmability

Required Material:

Nathan Ensmenger, “Introduction: Computer Revolutionaries,” in The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 1-26.
Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray, Nathan Ensmenger, and Jeffrey R. Yost, “Part I: Before the Computer,” Computer: A History of the Information Machine, Third Edition (New York: Westview Press, 2014), 3-61.
Evgeny Morozov, “Making It,” New Yorker, 13 January 2014.

Optional:

Anthony Grafton, “Jumping Through the Computer Screen,” New York  Review of Books, 23 December 2010.

WEEK 2

Tu 4/8
Digital Trajectories: The Machine That Changed the World or the World That Changed the Machine?

Required Material:

“Part II: Creating the Computer,” in Computer, 65-139.
The Machine That Changed the World documentary film (1992), Parts 1 and 2.

Th 4/10
Gender and the Early Computer

Required Material:

Jennifer Light, “When Computers Were Women,” Technology and Culture 40, 3 (1999): 455-483.
W. Barkley Fritz, “The Women of ENIAC,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 18, 3 (1996): 13-28.

Optional:

Marie Hicks, “Only the Clothes Changed: Women Operators in British Computing and Advertising, 1950-1970,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 32, 2 (October-December 2010), 2-14.

Fr 4/11
Discussion sections.

WEEK 3

Mon 4/14
Assignment #1 due, upload to Canvas by 11:59pm. You have been asked by Wired magazine to develop an *analytic* essay about the most significant aspect of the early history of the computer and the “digital.” Using specific evidence, precisely referenced and described, develop a 750-1000 word article that explains how and why this significant aspect matters to our understanding of the early history of computation and the computerized society. What aspect of this history should we most care about and why? Be sure to refer to the guidelines for assignments in the “Expectations” section of the syllabus.

Tu 4/15
The Cold War’s Electronic Battlefield

Required Material:

Paul N. Edwards, “‘We Defend Every Place’: Building the Cold War World,” in The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 1-41.
“Part 3: Innovation and Expansion,” in Computer, 143-225.
2001: A Space Odyssey, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968).

Optional:

Fred Turner, “The Cold and the Democratic Personality,” in The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 151-180.

Th 4/17
Automation, Knowledge, and the Postindustrial in the “Technetronic Society”

Required Material:*Note: Don’t worry if you don’t understand the readings for today. They are difficult. Try your best to make sense of them, particularly when the subject turns toward the larger stakes and implications of computers and digital technology.*

Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 3-67.
Daniel Bell, Ch. 2, “From Goods to Services: The Changing Shape of the Economy,” Ch. 3, “The Dimensions of Knowledge and Technology: The New Class Structure of Post-Industrial Society,” and Ch. 6, “Who Will Rule? Politicians and Technocrats in the Post-Industrial Society,” in The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 121-165, 339-367.

Optional:

David Harvey, “Part II: The political-economic transformation of late twentieth-century capitalism,” in The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), 121-197.

WEEK 4

Tu 4/22
Automation, Modularity, and Their Discontents in Cold War America

Required Material:

Tara McPherson, “U.S. Operating Systems at Mid-Century: The Intertwining  of Race and UNIX,” in Race After the Internet, eds. Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White (New York: Routledge, 2012), 21-37.
Steven Lubar, “Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate: A Cultural History of the Punch Card,” Journal of American Culture 15, 4 (Winter 1992): 43-55.
Desk Set, film (1957)

Optional:

Nathan Ensmenger, “The Black Art of Programming,” and “The Cosa Nostra of the Data Processing Industry,” in The Computer Boys Take Over, 27-49, 137-161.
Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” The Atlantic (July 1945).

Th 4/24
Xerox Parc, IBM, and the Dawn of the Computer Age

Required Material:

Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), xix-241.
The Machine That Changed the World documentary film (1992), Part 3.

Fr 4/25
Discussion sections.

WEEK 5

Tu 4/29
Open

Th 5/1
Countercultural to Cybercultural Computing

Required Material:

Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Optional:

Triumph of the Nerds, documentary film (1996).

WEEK 6

Tu 5/6
Care For a Nice Game of Chess? The Rise of the “Personal” Computer

Required Material:

“Part 4: Broadening the Appeal” in Computer, 253-305.
Paul Ceruzzi, “Inventing Personal Computing” in The Social Shaping of  Technology, eds. Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (Philadelphia:  Open University Press, 1999), 64-86.
WarGames, film (1983).

Th 5/8
Cyborgs and Cyberpunk

Required Material:

William Gibson, “Burning Chrome,” the Omni (1982), reprinted in Burning Chrome (New York: Harper Voyager, 2003),
Dani Cavallaro, “Introduction: Science Fiction and Cyberpunk,” in  Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction in the Work of William Gibson  (Continuum, 2001), 1-22.
Tron, film (1982).

Optional:

Donna Harraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), 149-181.
Bruce Sterling, “Preface,” Mirrorshades (1986), http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/mirro...

Browse The CyberPunk Project, http://project.cyberpunk.ru.

Fr 5/9
Discussion sections.

WEEK 7

Mon 5/12
Assignment #2 due, upload to Canvas by 11:59pm. You have been asked by Apple Computer to design a new personal computer. Your job is to draw a sketch or diagram of this machine (either by hand and then photographed or scanned into your computer, equipment available at NU Library for this if you do not possess it yourself, or by machine). Then, in 1000 words, develop an analytic essay in which you contextualize *what is significant* about your design in the context of the history of the personal computer (from its prehistory at places such as Xerox Parc to the emergence of the personal computer in the countercultural context of the 1960s and 1970s). You will not be evaluated for the excellence of your design (or your drawing skills), but rather by how you are able to develop an evidence-based argument that connects *specific aspects* of the materials from class (lectures, readings, viewings) to an articulated and compelling position about the details of your new personal computer design and how and why they build upon and/or extend the history of the concept of “personal” computing. Be sure to refer to the guidelines for assignments in the “Expectations” section of the syllabus.

Tu 5/13
The Rise of the Internet

Required material:

“Internet History from ARPANET to Broadband,” 2007 Congressional Digest.

Janet Abbate, “Privatizing the Internet: Competing Visions and Chaotic Events, 1987-1995,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 32, 1 (January- March 2010), 10-22.
John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” (1996), https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Decl....
Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 1-103.

Th 5/15
Tubes: A Material History of the Internet

Required Material:

Andrew Blum, Tubes, 105-271.
Christine Smallwood, “What Does the Internet Look Like,” The Baffler 18 (December 2009), 8-12, republished at http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/4/3/....

Optional:

Jean-François Blanchette, “A Material History of Bits,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62, 6 (April 2011): 1042-1057.
Eugene Thacker, “Foreword: Protocol Is as Protocol Does,” in Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), xi-xxii.

WEEK 8

Tu 5/20
Life In the Search Engine: The Power and Ethics of the Algorithmic Society

Required Material:

Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (And  Why We Should Worry) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), xi-148.
The Matrix Trilogy, films: The Matrix (1999), Matrix Reloaded (2003), Matrix Revolutions (2003).

Optional:

Sue Halpern, “Are We Puppets Yet in a Wired World?,” New York Review of Books, 7 November 2013, 24-28, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi....

Th 5/22
Who Owns the Future? The Matrix

Required Material:

Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything, 149-217.
The Matrix Trilogy, films: The Matrix (1999), Matrix Reloaded (2003), Matrix Revolutions (2003).

Optional:

Electric Frontier Foundation, “NSA Spying On Americans,” https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying [accessed 10 March 2014].
Rusty Foster, “When Programmers Scrape By,” The New Yorker, 11 February 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs....

Fr 5/23
Discussion sections.

WEEK 9

Tu 5/27
No Class

We 5/28
Assignment #3 due, upload to Canvas by 11:59pm. You have been asked to pitch a sequel to The Matrix Trilogy that specifically addresses the development of the Internet. Your pitch should be no more than 200 words and specifically imagine a film that speaks to the material nature of the Internet as a network and/or its changing nature in the context of the rise of Google. Then, in 1000 words, develop an analytic essay in which you contextualize *what is significant* about your pitch to what you take to be the most relevant details, arguments, and analysis from our readings, viewings, and lectures about the phenomenon of the Internet and Google. You will not be evaluated for the aesthetic excellence of your cinematic vision (though aesthetic excellence is welcome!) nor for the probability that you have imagined a Hollywood blockbuster (though more power to you if you have!), but rather by how you are able to develop an evidence-based argument that connects *specific aspects* of the materials from class (lectures, readings, viewings) to an articulated and compelling position about the details of your pitch and how and why they speak interpretively to the stakes of social life in an “Internet” and “Googlized” society. Be sure to refer to the guidelines for assignments in the “Expectations” section of the syllabus.

Th 5/29
Conclusions and Horizons: Life In, Below, and Beyond the Cloud

Required Material:

Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Vintage, 2010).
Danah Boyd, “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook,” in Lisa Nakamura and Peter A. Chow-White , eds., Race After the Internet (New York: Routledge, 2012), 203-222.
Anna Everett, “Have We Become Postracial Yet?: Race and Media Technologies in the Age of President Obama,” in Race After the Internet, 146-167.
Evgeny Morozov, “Solutionism and Its Discontents,” in To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), 1-16.
Rebecca Solnit, “Dairy,” London Review of Books 36, 4 (20 February 2014), 34-35, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n04/rebecca-....
Colin Kinninberg, “Beyond ‘Conflict Minerals’: The Congo’s Resource Curse Lives On,” Dissent, Spring 2014, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/articl....

Optional:

Carmen Hermosillo aka humdog,”Introducing Humdog: Pandora’s Vox Redux ” (1994),” http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299.
Jaron Lanier, “Digital Passivity,” New York Times, 27 November 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opi...
Jaron Lanier, “Fixing the Digital Economy,” New York Times, 8 June 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opi....
Ensmenger, “Conclusions: Visible Technicians,” in Computer Boys, 223-243.
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, documentary film by Adam Curtis (2011).

FINALFri 6/13
Assignment #4 due, upload to Canvas by 11:59pm.In 1500-2000 words (6-8 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman 12-point font, normal margins), develop an analytic essay about three related readings or viewings from the course. Your essay must articulate a compelling argument that addresses what we learn about “the computerized society” by bringing together these particular materials and the details within them. You will be evaluated for depth and precision of analysis rather than breadth of coverage; which is to say, your task is to develop, sharpen, and crystallize a sub-theme from the course that your three items most vividly illuminate rather than convey your knowledge of everything in the class. Zoom in on and take us down one compelling stream of history that we have studied and that you have been most interested in from the course. Be sure to refer to the guidelines for assignments in the “Expectations” section of the syllabus.

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Published on April 02, 2014 11:17

The Computerized Society: in the United States Since World War II