[Air-l] announcement - for summer 2004

[Radhika Gajjala]

WS 694 Technology, Migrancy and Globalization Summer 2004
_______________________________________________________________________

see links from http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik for updates.


Instructors: Radhika Gajjala, Bowling Green State University

                          Annapurna Mamidipudi, Dastkar Andhra



Bowling Green State University  Campus meetings May 12 through June 2nd
noon to 5 pm M-F



International Online analogue meetings will be scheduled once the
participants have been identified and accepted duration May 12 through June
2nd.
_____________________________



General Description:


Technologies and their uses have shaped and in turn been shaped by dominant
production processes, community practices and cultural activities
throughout history. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the practices of
travel and communication fostered by modern and postmodern modes of work
and play through an engagement with digital technologies. Therefore this
course - put it very broadly - examines various issues regarding labor, 
migration and globalization
at the intersection of the digital and the analogue, by attempting to
juxtapose various cultures of production locally and internationally in an
effort to show how technology, migrancy and globalization are linked to our
everyday lives whether in the US or in India.

The specific context(s) of instruction and dialogue:

One of the instructors will
bring an academic perspective and draw on her research and expertise with
digital media and the other instructor will bring an activist/field-work
perspective and draw on her expertise working with communities using
weaving technologies in rural India. Both have published co-authored essays
juxtaposing these contexts (see for instance Gajjala and Mamidipudi 1999,
2002, 2003 and forthcoming 2004).


In this course, through various activities, virtual engagements, community
related projects and lectures, we suggest a close examination of multiply
mediated contexts of technology design and use as a model for understanding
the scope for empowerment of underprivileged women and men through
information communication technologies. We will use several available
digital and distance technologies for interaction (webcams, moos whatnot).



Process:



Part of the workshop is designed as a virtual engagement
between two groups of people from different geographical locations. The two
instructors are geographically situated in different parts of the world one
is teaching from Bowling Green Ohio, USA and the other is teaching from
Hyderabad, India. There will be workshop participants from both locations.
Each group will also have some on-site activities and a required field
visit to a local site where technology, migrancy and globalization
intersect. Students will have to draw concepts and understandings based
readings, discussion, lectures and other class activities to produce a final
project that can be delivered in one - or a combination of the formats
specified in this syllabus.



The course will be delivered in six modules one module per week both online
and on-site (students in BGSU will be meeting in the computer lab as
scheduled and students in Hyderabad will be meeting as determined by the
on-site instructor there)



STUDENTS NOT RESIDING IN BOWLING GREEN, OHIO ARE ALSO ENCOURAGED TO 
REGISTER PLEASE
CONTACT radhik at bgnet.bgsu.edu for further information
on how to do so.