http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/2006/science_race.html

Also, here’s the link to the Human Genome Project website section titled “Minorities and Genomics: Issues of Race”

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/minorities.shtml

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKZ-GjSaqgo

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/science/21consciousness.html?_r=1

Here’s the brief description:

Exploring how the Internet and digital media have completely transformed contemporary life, this fascinating installment of PBS’s “Frontline” examines its effect on relationships, careers, daily life, education, the military and more. The documentary includes a unique interactive element, incorporating the stories of people who visited and posted to the Digital Nation Web site over the period of a year.

COURSE SYLLABUS
Fall 2010
Thursdays 4:00 – 6:40pm

Dr. Jason Farman
Email: jasonfarman@gmail.com
Office: Holzapfel 2107B
Office Hours: Tues/Thurs 1:30 – 3:30pm
Office Phone:
Course Website: www.jasonfarman.com/amst628

Course Description:

“The Body is Obsolete.” This phrase, which welcomed visitors to a digital artist’s homepage, has been echoed throughout science fiction literature, film, and the works of posthuman theorists. However, our engagement with environments (both material and digital) is entirely dependent on embodied interaction. But have these interactions undergone a radical paradigm shift in the digital age? Are we experiencing embodiment in an entirely new way? Is the gap between material space and virtual space dissolving? Throughout the course we will analyze the various modes of bodily significance in digital environments, ranging from the study of technological telepresence, the development of virtual communities, and the renewed importance of proximity in the age of mobile computing. The course will utilize a variety of methodologies such as phenomenology in Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Mark Hansen, embodied space and historical materialism in Henri Lefebvre, explorations of the posthuman in Katherine Hayles, and sociological studies of space and time in Rich Ling and Scott Campbell. We will also cover topics including social media, surveillance, technology as prosthesis, liveness, videogames, and interactivity.

Required Materials:

● Hansen, Mark. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 978-0262582667.

● Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ISBN: 0226321460.

● Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. ISBN: 0631181776.

● Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. ISBN: 978-0810101647.

● The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices. Ed. Rich Ling and Scott Campbell. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009. ISBN: 978-1412811088.

Assignments:

Reading assignments are listed on the day they will be discussed in class. You are expected to arrive to class having read the works listed. All written assignments are to be turned in via e-mail before the beginning of class. Computer problems are not an excuse for late work. You must cite all of your sources accurately according to MLA style and type all work in Times New Roman, 12-point font. Any plagiarized work will receive an “F” and may lead to a failing grade for the course.

Grades:

● Presentation 1: Lead the class in a discussion driven analysis of the assigned reading for a particular day: 10%
● Presentation 2: Present a short analysis of a particular digital space or embodied technology that you have utilized and explored: 10%
● Book Review: Present a review of a relevant, recently published book: 10%
● Questions/Definitions: Students must come to each class with three well-developed questions and connections based on the assigned reading (with e-mailed copy to instructor). This should be coupled with on-going definitions of “embodiment” and “space” and how the readings have augmented your definitions: 15%
● Participation: 15%
● Research Prospectus and Presentation: 10%
● Final Research Paper (15-20 pages): 30%
—Please Note: This syllabus is subject to change at any time according to the professor’s discretion. The assignments below may also include readings handed out in class, which each student is responsible for completing.

Schedule:

Week 1 – Intro

Sept. 1: Overview of course
● Watch Digital Nation

Week 2 – Framing Embodied Technology

Sept. 9: ● Heidegger, Martin, “The Question Concerning Technology” (CD-ROM)
● Dreyfus, Hubert, “Heidegger on Gaining a Free Relation to Technology” (CD-ROM)
● Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin, Remediation Intro, Ch. 1-2 (CD-ROM)
● Hansen, Mark, Ch. 1: “Between Body and Image: On the ‘Newness’ of New Media Art,” in New Philosophy for New Media.

Week 3 – The Virtual and the “Real”

Sept. 16: ● Grosz, Elizabeth, Ch. 2 “Lived Spatiality (The Spaces of Corporeal Desire)”
and Ch. 5 “Cyberspace, Virtuality, and the Real” from Architecture from the Outside (CD-ROM)
● Auslander, Phillip, Liveness, pg. 1-60 (CD-ROM)
● Phelan, Peggy, “The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction,” from Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, pg. 146-166 (CD-ROM)

Week 4 – Digital Embodiment and Interaction

Sept. 23:
● Hayles, N. Katherine, Ch. 1-2 in How We Became Posthuman
● Dourish, Paul, “‘Being-in-the-World’: Embodied Interaction” in Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction (CD-ROM)

Week 5 – Phenomenology and the Posthuman

Sept. 30:
● Hayles, N. Katherine, Ch. 8-10 in How We Became Posthuman
● Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Ch. 1-2 in Primacy of Perception

Week 6 – Phenomenologies of the Digital Age

Oct. 7:
● Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Ch. 5, “Eye and Mind,” in Primacy of Perception
● Hansen, Mark, Ch. 2-3 in New Philosophy for New Media.

Week 7 – Telepresence and Digital Prosthesis

Oct. 14:
● Hansen, Mark, Ch. 4-5 in New Philosophy for New Media.
●Stone, Allucquere Rosanne, “Split Subjects, Not Atoms: or, How I Fell in Love with my Prosthesis” (CD-ROM)
● Sobchack, Vivian. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, Ch. 9 (CD-ROM)

Week 8 – Intersubjectivity and Digital Identities

Oct. 21:
● Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Ch. 4, “Child’s Relations With Others,” in Primacy of Perception
● Young, Iris Marion, “Throwing Like a Girl” (CD-ROM)
● Dibbell, Julian, “A Rape in Cyberspace” online at: http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
● Westlake, E.J., “Friend me if you Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance,” TDR 52.4 (2008): 21-40 (CD-ROM)

Week 9 – Surveillance and the Body

Oct. 28
● Foucault, Michel, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish (CD-ROM)
● Berko, Lilli, “Surveying the Surveilled” (CD-ROM)
● Butler, Judith, “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia” (CD-ROM)
● Kafka’s “The Penal Colony” (Online: https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm)
● Crossley, Nick. “Body-Subject/Body-Power: Agency, Inscription and Control in Foucault and Merleau-Ponty,” Body & Society 2.2 (1996): 99-116. (CD-ROM)

Week 10 – The Production of Embodied Space

Nov. 4
● Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space Ch. 1-2
● Simonsen, Kristen. “Bodies, Sensations, Space and Time: The Contribution from Henri Lefebvre,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 87.1 (2005): 1-14.

Week 11 – Implacement and Displacement

Nov. 11
● Casey, Edward, Part 1 & 2 in Getting Back into Place (CD-ROM)
● Sobchack, Vivian, “Breadcrumbs in the Forest: Mediations on Being Lost” (CD-ROM)
● Hansen, Mark, “Body Times,” in New Philosophy for New Media
● Castells, Manuel, “The Space of Flows, Timeless Time, and Mobile Networks” (CD-ROM)

Week 12 – Mapping and Representations of Space

Nov. 18
● Casey, Edward, “Mapping It Out With/In The Earth,” and “Mapping With Earth Works,” in Earth Mapping: Artist Reshaping Landscape (CD-ROM)
● Landzelius, Michael, “The Body,” in A Companion to Cultural Geography (CD-ROM)
● Jahshan, Paul, “New Maps for a New Body” and “Cyberspace as Myth” in Cybermapping and the Writing of Myth
● Farman, Jason “Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of Postmodern Cartography” (CD-ROM)

Week 13

Nov. 25 – THANKSGIVING BREAK

Week 14 – The Space of Pervasive Computing

Dec. 2
● Selected Chapters in The Reconstruction of Space and Time

Week 15 – Presentations

Dec. 9: In-Class Research Presentations

Week 16 – Final’s Week, Papers Due