Thus Spake Zuska

I promised my friend Bill Hooker at the Science Blogging Conference that I would attempt to conduct a course of sorts on the blog. What I mean is that I am actually going to be teaching myself the course and discussing it on the blog; you are all invited to follow along if you like, or just listen in on my discussion of course material if you like.

The course syllabus is one I designed for a course called Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. I never got to teach this course so I'm pleased to now enroll myself as a student. Hopefully I will complete the assigned readings on time. I plan to give myself several chili peppers on RateMyProfessor.com, if I keep up my interest in the class.

Here's the brief description of the class from the syllabus:

This course explores the existence of pleasure, intellectual excitement, and desire as an important component of theorizing and doing science and engineering. We will examine the presence and/or absence of accounts of pleasure/desire in feminist theories of science, and in mainstream science and engineering texts and pedagogy. We will also examine feminist accounts of what might be termed the diversity challenge in engineering, and how feminist theories of science and pleasure can inform this issue. The implications for an adequate feminist theory of science, and for attracting members of underrepresented groups to science and engineering, will be a focus of the course.

You can find the full course syllabus here. I'll be following a slightly modified version of this syllabus for several reasons.

• There are two videos listed on the syllabus to which I don't have access. I won't be discussing them, unless by chance I find I way to get hold of them in time.
  
• Since I only have one student (me), I won't be having the group presentations each week. However, I do have readers - that's you! And we do have a comments section. If you've done the readings and the theoretical analysis, you may have some insights you want to share with the world at large. Even if you haven't, you may read my take on the week's readings, and decide you have something to say about that. The comments section will, I hope, function as a sort of class discussion.
  
• I won't be assigning final papers - though I may write one myself.
  
• The course was designed assuming that mostly non-scientists and non-engineers would be taking it. The final project, taking apart a hand mixer and describing its workings and their experience in taking it apart, was intended to let them encounter a simple, everyday, technological object from a new viewpoint. I wanted students to explore how well the feminist theory they'd been reading about applied - or did not - to their experience. Perhaps at the end I'll ask you, the reader, to talk about your encounters with simple, everyday technology. I'll have to do some more thinking on this one.
  
• Oh, and no grades! THAT ought to get me a good rating on RateMyProfessor.com!

That's basically it. I'll try to stick to a weekly format, and will plan to post my first piece on Monday, February 5th. You can find the assigned readings for week 1 on the syllabus. Most of the books are available through amazon.com. The only one you might have trouble finding is Sally Hacker's book (the full title is Pleasure, Power, and Technology : Some Tales of Gender, Engineering, and the Cooperative Workplace), but if you have access to a university library you should be able to find it there. Otherwise, try used booksellers/services.

I hope this sounds interesting enough that you might want to try a few of the readings, or at least come to see the summaries and add your comments to the "class discussion". I'm looking forward to seeing what evolves out of this.

Now I'd better get reading. I have some theoretical analysis to do!

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