Hello, everyone! I’m a senior here at BMC, double-majoring in English and Spanish, and being at this stage in my undergraduate career, I’m frantically searching for career possibilities or angles and spins I can put on my credentials in order to land a legit job in this crazy economy.
Which I suppose brings me to this class. I’m supposed to list any questions I have about gender, technology, and the intersections between the two. But the main reason I gravitated toward this course is that upon finding it on the Tri-Co course guide, I realized I had no questions about these topics. Or any thoughts about the two concepts as they relate to each other at all. So I guess that answers the “Why are you here?” question, as well as explaining why I haven’t posted any questions of my own. I have never thought about gender and technology in connection with one another, and I’m taking this class because the possibility of a relationship between the two concepts surprises and interests me.
I add my warm welcome to Laura’s–and share her excitement, writing on this auspicious inauguration day, anticipating the inauguration of these new places/spaces that are our course and its blog: a new collaboration between her, me and all of you; new (we hope) ways and means of thinking about the intersections of technology, gender and ourselves.
Help to get us going, okay? –>log in, and introduce yourself. What are you bringing to this conversation that might be usefully different from other people? What particular questions do you bring, which you hope we’ll explore this semester?
Lessee, about me; you can find out lots on my college home page. Short version: I’m a Quaker in a secular culture; a 4x mom here amongst 20-somethings; a commuter who lives a good deal of the time on a farm in Virginia (when I’m not living in some fictional world or another, which is where I actually spend most of my time). I’m also a feminist literary scholar w/ an abiding interest in what science and technology can teach us about the word and the world…and what literature might teach us about how science and technology make the word/world. I have some very particular questions, to start this semester, about how we use various technologies to “make” gender…
I’m sitting here tweaking the web site so that it reflects the themes we hope to address in this course and watching inaugural events. This is a truly historic moment and it humbles me to have the opportunity to watch this moment. At the same time, I’m always thinking about where we still need to go. For me, I still see that much more progress needs to be made, especially in areas related to gender, not just in the straightforward way that I face discrimination as a typical white middle-class woman, but also in places where gender meets race and class and sexuality. There are so many areas to cover. We’ve tried to include as much as possible, allowing lots of choice for your specific interests. Still, we’ll only scratch the surface, but we hope that the material and discussions in this class will lay the foundation for your thinking about the intersections of gender and technology and that you will continue to think about it as you continue your studies and your lives.
Some notes about the site. We’ll be blogging here (as I am now). Your papers will be posted here. Information is posted here about the papers and assignments and other aspects of the class. But I have also included images that represent some of our topics. The banner image at the top is a motherboard from a photographer called Wonderlane. I like the way it included the partial word “trans” as we’ll be talking about transgender, transexual, transitions, and more, so I thought it was an apt representation both because of the way a “motherboard” is a central computer component and because it hinted at other topics we’ll be exploring. In the sidebar is a rotating series of images, mostly collected by Anne. I’m gradually adding more and more images. We can add yours there too. We are also pulling interesting articles from a del.icio.us RSS feed. You can add to this list by saving a bookmark to delicious (instructions here) and adding the tag “genderandtech09.” We’ll talk more about all this technical stuff as we go along, but you should feel free to jump in at any time. I’m looking forward to starting tomorrow.
