<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>hello, everyone, and thank you again. this has been an interesting conversation to me as it obviously has been to many of you. i'm learning, and that's why i'm here.</div><div><br></div><div>however, i cannot share enthusiasm for some analyses of the current state of tension among humanities and STEM fields. please allow me to offer some contrarian views.</div><div><br></div>with respect, i've known a number of civil engineers, other engineers, and scientists. i don't know of many such engineers-in-training, if any at all, who'd choose "critical theory for civil engineers" over courses more relevant to their approaching professional practice when they're already required to take several courses every term. even if WE think it'd be desirable. maybe later in life as the certainty of mortality smiles at us and re-focuses our attention to things more philosophical. but habermasian surveying? communicative reason and power dynamics? emancipatory re-entry thermodynamics? it's possible, but i doubt it. <div><br></div><div>on the other hand, modernism v postmodernism for architects? yes, maybe in some historical art-design frame. the nature of being and nothingness for string cosmologists? yes, maybe. maybe even foucaultian power relations for MBAs. maybe. i see the the framing of such curricular possibilities as critically important, so i am skeptical of greeks for geeks, high theory for practical occupations, and the like. i even doubt sufficient registration's occurring for objectivism/positivism, a philosophy(ies) much more congruent with STEM pedagogies/andragogies. i doubt very seriously that such experimentation would pass the provost, much less achieve minimum registration. i don't at all question their potential value. i question the perceived value to most STEM students and their professors.<div><br></div><div>i say that even though i believe that curricular innovation is deeply necessary (and just as deeply avoided) in many parts of academe. to me, this symbolizes the unfortunate, continuing, curricular oppositional binary between humanities and STEM fields. either-or. quant-qual. my vocabulary-your vocabulary. my tenure structures-yours. and so on. </div><div><br></div><div>@mark: with our multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary crowd of scholars and scholar-artists here, maybe a more attractive solution is to find a few like-minded, known-for-excellent-teaching souls in a variety of departments and co-teach a provocative seminar at the edges of several fields--e.g., how about communications, marketing, and literature profs teaching multi-disciplinary critical analyses of metaphors used in web advertising? p.s. @mark, have you looked at humanities courses at MIT via opencourseware? </div><div><br></div><div>@davin: i believe that we in the USA would teach critical thinking if it were a valued process-skill in our society. however, it is generally not, i'd argue. and it is too threatening, IMO, to the dominant power of the machines over the matrix.</div><div><br></div><div>i take a different tack in the management, marketing, economics, and business law courses that i teach, fitting in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, design, political science, and others where i can. not comprehensively, but enough to show the interdependencies of knowledge and to try to ignite some sparks. my students appear to generally welcome that approach. but certainly not always.</div><div><div><br></div><div><div>best,</div></div><div>michael massey</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Jul 12, 2011, at 12:17 PM, <a href="mailto:idc-request@mailman.thing.net">idc-request@mailman.thing.net</a> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Today's Topics:<br><br> 1. giselle beiguelman>introduction (giselle beiguelman)<br> 2. Re: The Future of the Humanities (Mireille Roddier)<br> 3. Re: musing on humanities and other jails (John Sobol)<br>----------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>Message: 1<br>Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:11:40 -0300<br>From: giselle beiguelman <<a href="mailto:desvirtual@gmail.com">desvirtual@gmail.com</a>><br>Subject: [iDC] giselle beiguelman>introduction<br>To: <a href="mailto:idc@mailman.thing.net">idc@mailman.thing.net</a><br>Message-ID:<br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><<a href="mailto:CA+pD0cLekGLiaUqp_5WCXQxK9saN_gLtrEF9M1zd11_yVEOkxg@mail.gmail.com">CA+pD0cLekGLiaUqp_5WCXQxK9saN_gLtrEF9M1zd11_yVEOkxg@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8<br><br>My name is Giselle Beiguelman and as everybody who already posted to<br>this list recently, I?m very happy and proud of being invited by<br>Trebor Scholz to the Mobility Shifts Summit in New York. I?m a<br>Brazilian mediartist, curator and researcher. I teach Art History and<br>Design at the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of<br>S?o Paulo (USP). My artistic work has been presented in international<br>venues such as Net_Condition (ZKM, Karlsruhe), el final del eclipse<br>(Fundaci?n Telefonica, Madrid), The 25th S?o Paulo Biennial,<br>Algorithmic Revolution (ZKM), 3rd Sevilla Biennial, Transitio_MX<br>(Mexico), YOU_ser (ZKM), Geograf?as Celulares (Fundacion Telefonica,<br>Buenos Aires and Lima), artemov (Belo Horizonte and S?o Paulo) and<br>Visual Foreign Correspondents (Berlin), among others. I was Curator of<br>Nokia Trends (2007 and 2008), of the Brazilian participation in ISEA<br>Ruhr (2009) and of the on-line festivals HTTPvideo (2008 and 2010) and<br>HTTPpix (2010). I worked as Artistic Director of Sergio Motta<br>Institute (2008-2011), and I?m this year the curator of its 9th Art<br>and Technology Award. I was a member of the Interactive Art category<br>of ars electronica jury in 2010 and 2011 and from 2001 to 2010 I<br>taught Creative Processes with Media at the graduate program in<br>Communication and Semiotics of PUC-SP. My recent publications include<br>chapters in the Urban Screens Reader (Institute of Network Cultures,<br>2009); V01Ce - Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media (MIT Press,<br>2010) and Beyond the Screen (Transcript, 2010). My most recent book is<br>a collection of essays -- Nomadismos Tecnologicos -- which I organized<br>with Jorge La Ferla and was published by Ariel (Barcelona, 2011). More<br>about my work and me: <a href="http://www.desvirtual.com">www.desvirtual.com</a><br><br>I?ve been studying media arts, with a special emphasis in Latin<br>America and Brazil, and the way it has been questioning industrial<br>standards and the web 2.0 marketing, dislocating the discussion about<br>media and art from interactive features to agency processes.<br><br>What follows is an outline of what I intend to present and discuss at<br>Mobility Shifts:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">From Interaction to Agency<br></blockquote>Giselle Beiguelman<br><br>Interaction has become one of the most recurring words in<br>contemporaneity. It has invaded the advertising discourse, transformed<br>into a commodity of the information and telecom industry, and<br>consolidated as one of the dimensions of mediated and mediatized<br>sociability that supports social networks as Facebook and alikes. In<br>that context, to produce and critically evaluate art projects aligned<br>under the rubric "interactivity" is both a challenge and a complex<br>task.<br>In a world where from the telephone to the TV set, passing by the<br>refrigerator, everything promises interaction and connection, what<br>could be worth of note and reflection? What hasn't yet been promised<br>and delivered by the seductive gadgets that surround us, and by the<br>corporate instances through which we express and construct our<br>subjectivities?<br>Those questions are the points of departure in my presentation. I will<br>discuss the DIY aesthetics based on some projects ? by me and other<br>artists ? which I think are showing possibilities of problematizing in<br>a creative and critical way the uses of media and of networks,<br>stretching the field of interactivity beyond the mere applicability<br>embedded in their industrial projects.<br>Some of the projects I will certainly discuss: Newstweek (Julian<br>Oliver e Danja Vasiliev, 2011), Face to Facebook (Alessandro Ludovico<br>and Paolo Cirio), Gambiologia (Fred Paulino & Lucas Maffra), Mobile<br>Crash (Lucas Bambozzi), Sour-Mirror (Masashi Kawamura, Tomohiko<br>Koyama, Hiroki Ono, Qanta Shimizu), Time Notes (Gustavo Romano) and by<br>myself Suite4MobileTags (with Mauricio Fleury) and Chipped Movie.<br><blockquote type="cite">From my point of view, those works are important because they are<br></blockquote>projected not as objects in themselves, but as devices, operational<br>strategies, plans and actions of multiplication of the senses and<br>repertoires. They are art pieces that are also capable of proposing<br>new perceptive, cognitive, esthetic and political dynamics. I believe<br>those projects propose to rethink interactivity in the field of<br>agency, d?tournement and of distributed intelligence. And they can<br>unfold themselves in those directions because they are art works that<br>don't aim to the ability of being empowered by their users, but to the<br>empowerment of their interactors.<br><br><br><br>-- <br>giselle beiguelman<br><a href="http://www.desvirtual.com">http://www.desvirtual.com</a><br>http://www.twitter.com/gbeiguelman<br>+55 11 83981138<br><br><br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 2<br>Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:12:46 +0200<br>From: Mireille Roddier <mroddier@umich.edu><br>Subject: Re: [iDC] The Future of the Humanities<br>To: davin heckman <davinheckman@gmail.com>, Mark Marino<br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><markcmarino@gmail.com><br>Cc: iDC@mailman.thing.net<br>Message-ID: <9CD29C3D-B88B-4258-9D4D-CF629C58C67B@umich.edu><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252<br><br><blockquote type="cite">In theory, the lower faculty ought to be the arena where you can speak<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">truthfully without worrying about whether or not you are going to be<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">employable in the professional fields represented by the other faculties. <br></blockquote><br>Fascinating thread, and thank you Davin for bringing up this point.<br><br>Teaching in an architecture department from which an increasing number of our students graduate without the promise of employment, I have been questioning the content of my teaching in relation to the value of their degree: long term lessons versus immediate skill transmission? Contribution to public wellbeing or individual pursuits? Ideas and ideals or the means to realize those of others, unquestioned? (And I can only recommend ?Not for Profit: Why Democracy needs the Humanities?, by Martha Nussbaum, in which she makes the point that ?thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves?.)<br><br>I?m triggered to enter this conversation by your mention of Kant: I think Enlightenment values certainly have a place in this discussion.<br><br>It is difficult to deny that in our current classroom conditions, the desire ?to have? knowledge?or ?to appear to have? it in its post-modern version?greatly surpasses students? satisfaction with simply ?being?, defined here by an act of pure reflection. While a good number of our students voice their appreciation for the freedom and responsibility to interpret and transform the world, to learn/practice being engaged and critical, most students each year would clearly rather be handed predigested information?consumable data, prepaid. Thus are we served with the values of our time. Predictably, these are students who generally perform well in courses that involve the retention of facts, but suffer in design studios or in the courses that demand personal reflection?what Rousseau would call ?the gift of invention?.<br><br>If and when, today, ?critical thought? is mentioned in our syllabi, it is often as an end in itself, a feature on a line-up, part of the latest collection on display, advertisement geared towards the most ambitious of our consumers of knowledge. Despite being made unpopular by the dead-end pessimism of the Frankfurt school, critical thought in the 18th century was never considered a mere end in itself but only the first and analytical step towards transformation and eventual reconstruction. Last summer, I read the most comprehensive and revolutionary essay on public instruction I?ve come across: Nicolas de Condorcet?s 'Cinq m?moires sur l?instruction publique' (1791) in which he specifically outlines the goals of public instruction and the benefits of a nation made up of a population able to think autonomously and apt with critical capacity. As he writes, ?The goal of instruction, is not to make men admire a fully finalized legislation, but to render them capable of appraising and correcting it.?<br><br>Back then, the concept of social autonomy equated the enabling of a society through the sum of freethinking individuals. (This seems far from the pursuit of disciplinary autonomy found in today?s cultural practices, which privileges disciplinary preservation over individual emancipation.) It seems to me that the spirit of the Enlightenment fostered the practice of critical thought through exposure to a plurality of differing ideologies in order for an informed public will to emerge--a goal fundamentally lost, higher education no longer being conceived at the collective scale of forming ?an informed public,? but rather at the individual scale of creating competent producers. (A loss that inevitably ensued the end of free education for all, at least in France.)<br><br>This is not to say that individual aspirations were neglected to a common good: awareness of and independence from the ideological apparatuses influencing public opinion was seen as instrumental in the pursuit of individual freedom, and it is precisely that prerequisite which would amount to a just society. The very aims of ?public instruction? were to cultivate a critical distance from the ideological forces at play. In order to do so, instruction HAD to exist in a space that avoided the presence of a single school of thought, or of partial media. As explicitly stated by Condorcet, the space of public education had to be free of ideology?a concept very similar to the idea of secular ethics mentioned earlier in this thread, endorsed by the Dalai Lama.<br><br>In Condorcet?s mind, the secularization of public instruction was intended to keep the private sphere of religion from influencing a desirably pluralistic public sphere, but religions weren?t the sole targets to be kept out of school grounds: the legal sphere of state control posed a greater threat to the public sphere of civic society. Condorcet had already foreseen the dangers of the cult of the state itself, and the risk of letting those in political power influence the content of public instruction. ?Political religion,? as he called it, exposed education to a greater danger than private religions because the state could control the public realm...<br><br>What has happened to the intention to dedicate an ideologically neutralized zone to public instruction ?a territory subtracted from the control of state power, enabling the preservation of individuals? critical capacities? Today, the autonomy of a freethinking, emancipated public is an inconvenience to the ruling class, which actively controls the means of education.<br><br>Over two hundred years have past since the publication of Condorcet?s proposals for public instruction. All that was cautioned against has been incrementally instituted and, through the loss of public funding, education has been forced to operate in privatized form, largely financed by corporate sponsorship. In higher education, where the risks of forming a freethinking ruling class are extra-carefully managed, the conflicts of interest endangering the remnants of ?independent? research are quickly dismissed to the lure of funding. If the intellectual elite of the country, the product of today?s public liberal arts education, has no qualms about receiving funds from not only national private businesses but also multinational corporations, foreign governments, or the US military, it seems unreasonable of me to decry the opportunities afforded by the sort of sponsored studios popular in architecture school, based on ideological grounds. Yet, is it reasonable to completely lose the ends of education? The bottom-line why we teach what we teach, whose interests are being served along the way, and whom it most services in the end? In my double role as a ?teacher of architecture?, should I not foreground my role as ?educator? as much as that of "architect", and consider the ethical function of education in teaching our youth at least as much as the ethical function of architecture in the formation of future professionals?<br><br>Apologies for the divergence off topic and slight turn into rant. Mark, Critical Theory for Civil Engineers sounds to me like it should be a required course.<br><br>Cheers,<br><br>Mireille<br><br>ps. also of note for this discussion, Marilyn Strathern's "A Community of Critics? Thoughts on new knowledge"<br>http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00287.x/full<br>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHDCcAF0rQ4<br><br>On Jul 12, 2011, at 5:17 AM, davin heckman wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Hi Mark,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Thanks for initiating such a fertile thread!<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In a way, I think Kant was onto something when he discusses the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">importance of the "lower" faculty: philosophy. In Kant's day, the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">higher faculties were law, theology, and medicine, which were the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">chief vocational fields of the university. For Kant, philosophy stood<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">apart because it had to speak to all three, but without having to<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">produce the outcomes of all three. The strategic value of this is<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">enormous! "Philosophers" (and I'm not talking about people with<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Ph.D.s in philosophy, I am talking about Doctors of Philosophy), if<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">they are doing their jobs, don't have to be loyal to any particular<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">professional field (now, I know, academia has been ruined to the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">extent that it has been transformed into a "professional field"). In<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">theory, the lower faculty ought to be the arena where you can speak<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">truthfully without worrying about whether or not you are going to be<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">employable in the professional fields represented by the other<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">faculties. For instance, because I am not a priest or a physician, I<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">can criticize those field more frankly than someone who might be<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">training in those professions and who are hoping to get jobs in those<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">fields. I don't have to worry about biting the hand that feeds me. I<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">am not very well-read when it comes to Kant, but this idea seems like<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">one worth revisiting vis-a-vis the humanities.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Often, I think that's what my job is. Programs like business,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">education, applied science tend to attract a lot of students. The<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">programs tend to be fairly good at training people to function in<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">prescribed professional roles. But in the end, teaching people to<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">manufacture tools or to perform techniques is not the where people<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">live. What we DO with our tools and techniques is vastly more<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">interesting. What we wish we could do is even more interesting. (The<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">interesting scientists who write books that everyone reads are not<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">interesting because they are really good at solving math problems....<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">they are interesting because they can figure out neat ways to use<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">their abilities... they can take our thought into new futures, they<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">can take our past and remake it, and they can frame the present from a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">different perspective.... in other words, they are interesting<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">insofar as their work dips into art, philosophy, ethics, politics,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">etc. They move from the dry material of method and enter into the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">terrain of analogy, of the poetic, of the symbolic.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Hence, I think that one great way to make the humanities feel more<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">relevant is to build courses that capitalize on bridging the skills<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">that students have obtained through their particular vocation with<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">broader social and personal desires that they haven't realized.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Courses in speculation, metaphysics, fiction, representation....<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">these force all of us to make these tools serve our desires. These<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">aren't necessarily "new" courses, rather they are newly relevant if we<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">are looking at the world we have made and ask ourselves what kind of<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">future it has, is that the future we want, and what we can do about<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">it. When we start talking about the pursuit of desire or the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">mitigation of fear, this also then forces us to consider ethical and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">political questions.... because we also have to think about the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">impact our desires will have, how we wish to form our desires, where<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">we want to direct them, etc.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Now, there are some practical problems with this because most schools<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">have crappy leaders who don't understand the value in building a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">curriculum that structurally supports robust criticism by a lower<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">faculty, by surrounding it with professional programs. Increasingly,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">there is an attitude that the business school itself IS the hand that<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">feeds.... that the applied science program IS the hand that feeds....<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and so the humanities faculty is placed in a strategically weak<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">position. So, politically, the structure of the university itself,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">where it derives its mandate, what public good it is to serve, what<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">its mission is.... these are the big fights that have to take place.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">But I think we DO have to start somewhere... and one way is by<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">demonstrating on a small scale, the value of critical thinking.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Davin<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:09 AM, Mark Marino <markcmarino@gmail.com> wrote:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Hi, IDC-ers,<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Last summer I met a computer scientist who shared with me his hierarchy of<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">knowledge. In his schema, the sciences were at the top and all branches of<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">knowledge and learning in the academy fell underneath. By his account, at<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">one time, due to a collective ignorance, much of knowledge was ordered under<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">the Humanities, but slowly over time that ice cap had been chipped away and<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">had floated off and melted into the larger sea of Science where it<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">belonged. By his account medicine, astronomy, and many other realms of<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">knowledge had been relocated to their rightful place, leaving only certain<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">types of speculative philosophy, perhaps a few arts, and other trivial or<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">superfluous enterprises.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">I don't think this computer scientist was misrepresenting his perspective to<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">be provocative, though I do believe he knew exactly which of my buttons he<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">was pushing. His pedestal for positivism was built upon a larger progress<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">narrative (that a humanities course might even critique). Nonetheless, it<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">took a long coffee break with a philosophy librarian friend to pull me back<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">from the ledge or perhaps get me off the war path.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">In an age where very reasonable folks are questioning the value of a college<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">education, when the digital humanities seem to be flourishing, and when the<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">US and global economies are still flagging sending students into their most<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">pragmatic shells, I wonder if it isn't time for a new kind of humanities<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">course. I guess I am thinking about something different than what I know<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">to be "digital humanities" in as much as that can mean the humanities plus<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">computers (not to reduce -- I just don't mean that version of DH.)<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Remember last year and Cornell's President Skorton's address?<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/01/humanities<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">From an Inside Higher Ed article on the topic:<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Robert M. Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities,<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">said he has noticed increasing concern among university leaders about "the<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">marginalization of non-scientific work" in higher education. "At every<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">meeting these days, there is concern expressed about the status of the<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">humanities and the fear that the humanities and to some extent the social<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">sciences are being sidelined in a discussion about higher education that<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">seems to focus almost exclusively on the economic value of universities."<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Are the Humanities under attack? If they need rescued and if so how?<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">So here's an idea, and this is not new: humanities need to be able to show<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">what they can offer even the sciences. (Now I don't mean getting caught up<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">in the debate over the "value" of the humanities directly -- as that's like<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">trying to defend a fine arts program on the basis of the Christie's auction<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">price on a few Picasso's. Also Stanley Fish's retort that the humanities<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">need not justify themselves comes to mind, but it's probably easier to make<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">that claim when you are the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">and a professor of law. That's not to slight, but to say it's easier to<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">claim the humanities don't need to argue their value when you've already<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">established/earned your own security.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Here is where my personal interest comes in with Critical Code Studies in<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">the Humanities and Critical Code Studies (HaCCS Lab), where one of the goals<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">is to create new spaces for humanities and computer scientists to meet and<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">discuss. While I think it is naive to suggest that the humanities will all<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">of the sudden be valued the way the sciences are, I'd be interested to hear<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">about humanities courses geared toward scientists. Not Rocks for Jocks but<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Greeks for Geeks. Critical Theory for Civil Engineers. I'm interested in<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">classes that teach the traditional humanities topics but that are aimed at<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">the science students -- beyond, say, the History of Science or the History<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">of the Philosophy of Science. Which is another way of asking: what can the<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">humanities teach the sciences (which probably plays into a completely<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">useless binary)?<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">I guess I've been thinking a lot about what humanists can offer code studies<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">and can't help feel that we could design humanities courses geared toward<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">science students that would be (actually and hopefully perceived to be)<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">valuable to their pursuits -- with perhaps the long-term goal of not erasing<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">but seriously smudging the division between the sciences and humanities.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Don't get me wrong -- these would INCREASE humanities offerings, not take<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">the place of current classes.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">I know I'm preaching to the interdisciplinary choir, but can anyone reply<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">with actual courses they've taught or offered at their institution that seem<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">to fit this bill? Can we propose imaginary courses that might accomplish<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">these goals? Or does this in effect undervalue that work that any good<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">humanities course does already?<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Thoughts?<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Mark Marino<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">HaCCS Lab<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">University of Southern California<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">http://haccslab.com<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#540000"><br></font>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 3<br>Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:29:08 -0400<br>From: John Sobol <soboltalk@gmail.com><br>Subject: Re: [iDC] musing on humanities and other jails<br>To: idc@mailman.thing.net<br>Message-ID:<br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><CAGRdosSjVTgr+EfPgJtm5xVSfC0kBsM5B+Jj8MeYO4mDAi8LmA@mail.gmail.com><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br><br>first of all, I love this...<br><br>On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 9:37 PM, Janet Hawtin <lucychili@gmail.com> wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">imagine if every local region did a census of species. regularly.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">perhaps citizen collected like a human census.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">indigenous and introduced, food, fibre, and habitat.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">imagine if each community took as its first principle that any species<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">indigenous to that area must have<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">room to live sustainably in a coherent ecology. that the continuation<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">of biological diversity was a foundation goal for each local area and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the planet as a whole. plan that space. mean it.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote>but more important for our discussion is this:<br><br><br><blockquote type="cite">not sure if this helps with humanities. to me it is the ecologies<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">which are more marginalised<br></blockquote><br><br>and this:<br><br>On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl> wrote:<br><br>Often humanities are dull and asleep, and straightout<br>conservative. I really wonder if such organisational constructs from a<br>perspective of radical politics are defendable to start with. Authors<br>are. Libraries, for sure. To make your school, yes, that would be brave!<br><br>--<br><br>Although no doubt in your own academic institutions there are very real<br>conflicts between the humanities and STEM (what gets taught, who gets hired,<br>who gets funding, who gets respect, etc.) I think it is a mistake to project<br>this conflict onto society as a whole. Because at a macro-level these two<br>'competing' curricula actually have a great deal in common, notably their<br>overlapping epistemologies and shared role in shaping the intertwined<br>industrial and intellectual architectures of America/Europe past and<br>present.<br><br>I know that some of you will object to my suggesting that there is a single<br>dominant epistemology in the humanities, but there is, and it is extremely<br>clearly defined by academia's immutable knowledge certification tools,<br>including marks, essays, footnotes, tests, dissertations, degrees,<br>peer-reviewed research, etc.etc. These authentication tools define knowledge<br>in the same way that science defines knowledge, i.e. as fixed facts. So at<br>an epistemological level there really is no crisis, just a shift in<br>resources.<br><br>At a social level there is indeed a crisis, but it arises as a consequence<br>of the unsustainability of this monological epistemology that has no ears to<br>hear the sound of its own imminent doom, not as the result of an internecine<br>squabble between social scientists and physical scientists. Ask yourself:<br>would a massive reorientation towards the humanities result in a massive<br>reorientation of society towards ecologically sustainable principles? I<br>don't see how anything more than blind hope could lead one to draw the<br>conclusion that it would. More teaching of Thoreau will not a green world<br>make.<br><br>At least not the way Thoreau is taught today in humanities classes. Stripped<br>of all experience, of all subjectivity, of all revolutionary courage and<br>sweaty effort. But if we threw away marks and picked up shovels, threw away<br>essays and picked up journals, threw away degrees and picked up the will to<br>change and challenge and dream. If we actually taught Thoreau's real lessons<br>by living them, instead of teaching literate lessons about his book, then<br>the true crisis would come into focus at many levels. And that is the crisis<br>between fixed facts and possible futures, between sustainable wholes and<br>unsustainable parts, between pride and humility on an evolutionary scale.<br><br>To make your school, as Thoreau did, that would be brave. To argue that we<br>need more tenured humanities profs is not. Our world is in crisis and if the<br>humanities are to be of any help whatsoever in saving it for our children,<br>their transgressive and radicalizing legacies will need to be reclaimed and<br>reenacted far beyond the classroom and the campus, on behalf of our unknown<br>futures and not our overglossed past.<br><br>It seems to me that Mobility Shifts may already be helpful in these<br>respects. I look forward to more...<br><br>John Sobol<br><br><br></div></blockquote></div><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Michael W. Massey</div><div>Doctoral Student</div><div>Adult Education, Higher Education, and Qualitative Research Programs</div><div>River's Crossing, 4th Floor</div><div>The University of Georgia</div><div>and</div><div>Adjunct Instructor</div><div>Marketing and Management</div><div>Athens Technical College</div><div>Athens, GA</div><div>HOME: <a href="mailto:mikemassey@windstream.net">mikemassey@windstream.net</a></div><div>UGA: <a href="mailto:mwmassey@uga.edu">mwmassey@uga.edu</a></div><div>ATC: <a href="mailto:mmassey@athenstech.edu">mmassey@athenstech.edu</a></div></div></span></div></span></div></span></span>
</div>
<br></div></div></div></body></html>