DMS 414 / 515

4 credit hours

Tuesday, 5 - 8:40 pm

Spring 1999

Gender and Technology will bridge feminist theory, the arts, community service, and media in a hands-on environment that will not only have direct impact for the students involved but will contribute to the community via active participation and consciousness-raising. The course will offer students the chance to explore gender issues relating to the body, language, representation, education-- next to and with technology. At the beginning of the semester, each intense seminar will focus on current topics, such as the role of technology in shaping representation, identity, the body, and the social meaning of technological tools. Through critical essays and theory, the participants in the course will explore both women's and men's relationship to technological fields and computer culture. The course will draw from many media forms and will include screenings of films, videos, multimedia presentations, internet sites, and CDROMs. We will read theorists like Berger, Pearce, Stone, Haraway, and others. Multimedia programs will be taught when needed by the projects.

The first two months of the course are intensive interdisciplinary debating/reading/thinking/viewing seminars in which students get a foundation in feminist theory and activism, especially focusing on ideas and activities related to developmental growth for pre-adolescent and adolescent girls. After these two months of engaging with media work, essays, and hearing from visiting experts from a variety of related fields, students will be challenged with hands-on projects to understand the impact of these issues in the community in a final, collaborative effort between the participants in the course and girls in the Buffalo community.