Pedagogical approach

First things first: sanity

Let’s face it, these are complicated times. You may be struggling with working from home, complicated care challenges, worry about health risks for yourself and others, grief and loss, and other interpersonal challenges arising in both usual and unusual times. Me, too. And if there’s one thing the last two years have taught us, we can’t predict the future; it’s a strange time to plot out a semester’s worth of work, with the blythe assumption that what we imagine will happen will actually take place, under conditions similar to those we thought would occur.

So: this course plan is a plan that will be adjusted, as necessary, as the semester proceeds and we discover what is actually possible for each of us and for us together as a community. Whatever happens, I will not increase the workload represented by this syllabus, but I may reduce it or alter its form.

How this course works

This course is a PhD research seminar. The goal of the course is to foster your understanding of the sociotechnical dimensions of rural computing and rural infrastructure by drawing on related qualitative, critically oriented research literature on the interrelationship between rural life and technology. Our work will be grounded in the fields of Science & Technology Studies and Information Science and include forays into related works in anthropology, history of technology, and rural studies. My assumption going into this seminar is that you are in the process of developing a scholarly project which may touch in some way on this literature. My goal in this seminar is to help you develop those scholarly perspectives and to find ways to use the wonderful work we will explore in this course to inspire you and enrich your project. I strongly encourage you to contribute related expertise you have already developed to our ongoing conversations and look forward to learning from you in turn.

I do not assume that you have background in all or even most of the literatures we touch on, but some facility in reading critically oriented, qualitative work will benefit you in this course.

Your active participation in course reading and discussion will be essential to your learning in this class. This is a paper-based, rather than project-based course. You will produce a final paper which reflects on the readings discussed in this course and other related work, in light of your own research project.