Winter 2007 • HUM 596 (SLN 13905) • 5 credits (Credit/No Credit Option)

Public Humanities and the Digital University

Mondays, 11:00 am-2:30 pm • Communications 202, UW Seattle Campus

Instructors: Ron Krabill and Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell)

The digital revolution is powerfully reshaping the nature of university/community relationships as well as identity formation and embodiment practices. This course will explore, assess, and create new forms of public scholarship that address this transformation, examining the relationships between research, the production of knowledge, and community engagements that address us at the outset of the 21st century. Workshops (physical and virtual) with several of our local and global partner organizations will allow us to consider the uses of the public humanities as a means of building stronger bridges across various “digital divides,” as well as the implications of the digitization of the university for new pedagogical strategies, for emerging university/community partnerships, and for the concept of the human itself.

This course is part of a year-long series of talks, workshops, and courses developed as a collaboration between the cross-institutional Cultural Studies Praxis Collective and the Simpson Center's Institute on the Public Humanities for Doctoral Students. The series focuses on building arts and cultural bridges for research and teaching that enable and enhance various forms of public scholarship.

Gray Kochhar-Lindgren is serving as the Interim Coordinator of the Center for University Studies and Programs at UW Bothell. A faculty member in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences—with particular interests in philosophy, literature, and New Media—he holds the Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Emory University. The author of Technologics (2005), Starting Time (1995), and Narcissus Transformed (1993), Gray has also been the recipient of two teaching awards. He is currently writing on Maurice Blanchot and on the idea of the university in the digital age.

Ron Krabill is Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences program at UW Bothell. He teaches courses involving African studies, cultural studies, mass media, contentious politics, and colonial and postcolonial history and theory. His research, published on three continents, focuses on politics, mass media, and culture during and after apartheid in South Africa, with a particular interest in social movements and issues of peace and justice.  He recently won the UW Bothell Distinguished Teaching Award.