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GIST

Submitted by Anne Dalke on Sat, 05/22/2010 - 7:29am

Welcome to "GIST": A Course about Gender, Information, Science and Technology, offered in Spring 2011 @ Bryn Mawr College. This is an interestingly different kind of place for writing, and may take some getting used to. The first thing to keep in mind is that this is not a place for "formal writing" or "finished thoughts." It's a place for thoughts-in-progress, for what you're thinking (whether you know it or not) on your way to what you think next. Imagine that you're not worrying about "writing" but instead that you're just talking to some people you've met. This is a "conversation" place, a place to find out what you're thinking yourself, and what other people are thinking, so you can help them think and they can help you think. The idea is that your "thoughts in progress" can help others with their thinking, and theirs can help you with yours.

We're glad you're here, and hope you'll come both to enjoy and value our shared imagining of the future evolution of ourselves as individuals and of our gendered, scientific, technological world. Feel free to comment on any post below, or to POST YOUR THOUGHTS HERE....

The past never happened

Submitted by Apocalipsis on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 11:22pm

complexity

This week's class discussion on Barad was very interesting as it posed various tensions. One of her biggest criticism is that people shouldn’t rely on moral judgments. She discusses the role of agency and how authors write text while the text also writes the author which leads me to question the role of power and who maintains it. Her basis of critique of Frayn’s play demonstrates that you can’t know all of the time, and that relying on content sometimes leads to points of ethics which doesn’t always lead anywhere. You can’t necessarily judge actions or intentions objectively because there’s no objectivity which ties into her discussion of the past which she argues never ends.

I could never be your man.

Submitted by leamirella on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 4:47pm

I will admit that my post this week veers a little bit from what we looked at in class. However, I do feel that it is relevant to the course as a whole.

Some background info:
Today, I was sitting at my laptop in my room listening to my Pandora station. A friend came into the room wanting to talk so I switched my tabs, paused the song I was playing and then saw the name of the album that was currently playing. It was called "Women in Technology". My initial reaction was woah, this GIST course is taking over my life! And then (after freaking out at my geekiness) I decided to look more into why the album was named 'Women and Technology' and I thought it would be interesting to write about.

Class Notes Wednesday 3-16

Submitted by Amophrast on Wed, 03/16/2011 - 3:03pm

Gentech notes 03-16:

- Re-evaluate how resources are being spent (socially)—ex: $$$$’s spent on 88 year old for surgery—great choice personally. Socially, maybe not so much

Class Notes 03/14/11

Submitted by Hilary_Brashear on Tue, 03/15/2011 - 9:41pm

Class notes 3/14

(Sorry if I misspell people’s names!)

We began with course keeping, as usual.

Liz reminded us that: This course is constructed to try to find some interesting intersections. What are the big ideas that connect these four areas? What is the overall road map? What are the connecting ideas?

We divided into smaller groups to discuss the reading, "Moored Metamorphoses: A Retrospective Essay on Feminist Science Studies." By Banu Subramaniam

My group, the Poppies said:

robot opera

Submitted by spreston on Tue, 03/15/2011 - 11:37am

I heard about an opera while listening to OnPoint on NPR that sounds really cool and I just wanted to share the link for it because it's pretty relevant to this class: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/03/07/robot-opera

Next Steps

Submitted by Anne Dalke on Mon, 03/14/2011 - 9:41am

We've had lots of different suggestions for what texts or films to schedule for our three open classes. Look through the possibilities others have mentioned (listed below, w/ details in individual postings). Then continue the conversation here: what intrigues you? What don't you know about that you'd like to explore together? What is already familiar to you, which might be worth re-interpreting through the lenses of this course? Do you have any preferences regarding the FORM--fiction? non-fiction? texts? films? other visual sources?

kgould: Jane McGonigle, Reality is Broken
preNic: Sherry Turkle, Together Alone
MissArcher2: Michael Chorost, World Wide Mind; Cinderella Ate My Daughter
leamirella: Jaron Lanier, You are not a Gadget;

evaluation

Submitted by merlin on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 9:27pm

I found it exciting in this course how virtually every piece of information we come across is new to me. Coming from a major far outside english or gender studies, I find myself becoming far more knowledgable than I had been, particularly when we had the discussion on all the different terms referring to sex and gender. Like a couple of the other students who mentioned their own areas of study, I also find it refreshing that the class is heavily discussion-based. Most of the classes I've ever taken in the last few years here have been more of a lecture style in the sciences and psychology.

Humanity as a weakness?

Submitted by Apocalipsis on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 4:22pm

Wednesday class panel featuring different (primarily) imaginary figures was extremely interesting and fun. It was amusing to see how we struggled categorizing each other, with the exception of analyzing one another on the basis on violence. I wonder if the entire class were to participate if this theme would have persisted. For my character personally (Wolverine) I found the following concepts challenging and intriguing:

Role of technology

Class Notes for 3/2/2011 - Imaginary Panel

Submitted by Franklin20 on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:18am

Overview:

· Monday panel members were mostly historical, today they are mainly imaginary

· How do gender information science and technology look different for imaginary people than they do for real people

· Consider how these figure may interact with Harroway’s leaky distinctions between human-animal, organism machine, physical – non-physical

· Imaginary vs the Real – both imaginary stimulation and real stimulation affect the equally.

Panel

Mid-semester evaluation

Submitted by shin1068111 on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 4:07pm

What's working, and what needs working on, for you as an individual?

I think the amount of readings and other preparations that we have to do for the class are fair. Weekly posting seems to help to present organized thoughts that were not said during the class. I think the current system is working out fine.

What's working, and what needs working on, for us as a group (on-line, in class, in conversation and on the panels)?

It is hard to tell what is working or what is not working as a group, but I think that everyone seems to be participating fairly well and presenting thoughtful ideas.

Playing video games can help change the world

Submitted by kgould on Wed, 03/09/2011 - 8:00pm

I found this on Tumblr today and thought it would be appropriate for GIST. Perhaps even one of the books we should read?...

RL social construction

Submitted by phreNic on Mon, 03/07/2011 - 2:49am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCPr0w5QaIA

LOL Theorist

Submitted by Amophrast on Sun, 03/06/2011 - 3:35pm

While roaming the internet:

from: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/clopez/wordsareweeds/

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individual practices

Submitted by jlebouvier on Fri, 03/04/2011 - 11:47pm

So, at the beginning of this week I inteded to create a comic strip exploring the life of Stewie Griffin (the character I became during our discussions). A rough draft was made, but never made it to a presentable stage. I am glad to speak on the individual practices of the panelists involved this week. Monday was interesting because it seemed that students were less comfortable taking on the personas of historical characters. This may have been because they went first, but it happened more and more that people would slip out of character. Overall, looking at the historical figures' practices it seemed they were more theoretical. Yes, there were characters like grace hopper and amelia earhart who put their views into practice.

Intersection of Panel Personal Practices

Submitted by anonymous123 on Fri, 03/04/2011 - 11:39pm

gender

During this week's panel, I noticed that gender played more of an important role in the personal practices of certain individuals versus others. Individuals such as Jess Dobkin (Marina) use their bodies as an important component of their practice, while the work of other individuals such as Michelle Obama (myself) is separate yet relevant to her work. The work of the first lady is centered around an ideal or a concept of how a woman should behave. As the first lady of the United States, Michelle is expected to conduct herself in a manner that is appropriate for the wife of a president.

Gender and history

Submitted by MSA322 on Fri, 03/04/2011 - 9:04pm

I was reflecting on the Top Secret Rosies documentary we saw at the BMFI. It is rather surprising in a sad way how women have always been discriminated against throughout history and until this day, gender is something we, humans have not gotten to a unanimous agreement upon in regards to equality and fairness. It goes back to the categories we tend to make, everything is categorized and put under a label, jobs, clothing, appearance, colors, wages, and decision making in some places. Top Secret rosies showed how women have played an incredible role during the war, a role they still have not been fully recognized for. Before the war, during the war, and throughout time, women have not been treated fairly, and the world have gotten away with it.

Are Society's Prescriptions Something We Crave?

Submitted by spreston on Fri, 03/04/2011 - 8:00pm

I have been thinking a lot about the different reactions people voiced in class to the material we have explored thus far. From classmates feeling depressed to confused to happy that their opinions were changing so much, I began to think about mine. I realized that, despite many of the readings criticizing our society’s use of categories, binaries, and stereotypes, I do not necessarily personally dislike a lot of society’s conventions. This got me wondering why, when I am surrounded by many peers who dislike the roles society decides for us on the basis of our sex, I actually find these comforting. In a lot of aspects in our life, we have so much choice. It sometimes takes me a good hour to decide what I am in the mood to eat for dinner, or even which

Post for 03/04: Panel discussion

Submitted by shin1068111 on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 11:22pm

On the first day of the panel discussion with historical characters, it was noticeable that most of the figures are women and they come from 19 to 21st century. It is understandable that people have more knowledge about the recent figures that they chose to be them. Even though, all the students were advised to select a figure that could represent gender, science, and technology, I feel like most of them decided to represent a figure that is more focused on gender. The figures represented by some of the students are the ones who have tried intentionally or unintentionally break the gender binary and the stereotypes of women.

March 3: Class Notes on Second Panel.

Submitted by cara on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 4:47pm

Here's a rough transcript of the Panel of fictional characters we had in class on Wednesday.

First, we went through forum postings from the previous week:

merlin: Imagining yourself doing activities actually changes the brain. For instance playing the piano. People who imagined themselves playing, but didn't actually know how, their brains appeared the same as those who were actually being instructed.

watson/vgaffney: Close reading is still a very important skills in the humanities. Particularly english and philosophy. The complexity of the writing requires it.

Class notes for 2.28.11

Submitted by merlin on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 5:14pm

Wednesday February 28th

*Aybala50 made a great recreation of the 2-axes graph we made in lecture. I will not include one in my notes, hers is an excellent representation.

Anne:

Today's panel is composed of Historical figures.

Wednesday's panel will be composed of Imaginary figures.

Primary question: whether or not gender science and technology look any different in the context of imagination.

Papers:

Think about the life in the context of one of the authors we've just read.

reminder that we have 4 deadlines for these papers, we only have to do 3 of them