bodies
+ machines interrogating
gender + technology in the digital age
COMS 515
3 credit hours
Tuesday 1:15 pm - 4:00 pm
Professor Mary Flanagan
E-mail: mary@maryflanagan.com
Cybertechnologies have created new cultural contexts for understanding gender;
in cyberspace, the breakdown of categorical paradigms such as body/mind and
human/machine allows us to refashion gendered categories and hierarchies. As
Teresa de Lauretis claims, technology "shapes our perception and cognitive processes,
mediates our relationships with objects of the material and physical world,
and our relationships with our own or other bodies."
The human/machine interface becomes a place where traditional notions of subjectivity
and embodiment are potentially abandoned--as such it becomes a rich area for
feminist intervention and investigation. This course will explore technology's
interaction with the concept of gender how the terms of gender are embodied
in technologies, and conversely, how technologies shape our notions of gender.
This course will give students the opportunity to critically assess the gendered
relations produced in areas such as entertainment and games, work, domesticity,
identity, education, race and ethnicity, and the body.
This course will explore the following questions: How do cybertechnologies enter
into our personal, social and work lives? To what extent are does cyberspace
offer a place for alternative identities or cultures? How does cyberculture
reinscribe or rewrite gender dichotomies? Does cyberspace offer the possibility
of transcending the body? If so, what are the implications for notions of gender,
and for women? How are writers and artists rewriting our experiences and understandings
of cyberculture? Does technology herald a new era of the post-human? Finally,
does technology offer new perspectives on the sex/gender distinction?
Your syllabus is located Here.
The course will utilize the following texts: Cybersexualities: A Reader in Feminist
Theory, Cyborgs, and Cyberspace. Ed. Jenny Wolmark. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1999.
Journals + Cultural Studies Resources For Graduate Students NEW
links
Hypertext,
Cybernetics, Cyborgs and Virtual Realities
- Resource
links at the University of Iowa
Gender
& Race in Media: Cyberspace
-
Resource links at the University of Iowa
Resource
Center for Cyberculture Studies
- Resources at the University of Maryland
International
Gender, Science and Technology
- Women
in Global Science and Technology, Ontario Orgnaization
PopCultures.com.
- Cultural Studies Center
Frieze
- Contemporary Arts and Culture
The
Brain.com
- Java based browsing in relationships
Imaginary
Realities
- includes
the following texts
The Mudder's New Clothes - Rebecca Handcock
Gender and the Mud - Marcie Kligman
Embarassing Mischannels - John Hopson
Limited Advancement - Derek Harding
A Rape in Cyberspace - Julian Dibbell
Languages in Muds - David Bennett
Note: You must have an email account for this course. Go to CC 207 or H-925 with your id, get the account, and along with this you will get 5MB of space for your personal home page + assignments.