• Gaia: Worlding and feminist action

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Five technologies:
=reading power (radical semiotics, la facultad, ‘signifyin’
=deconstruction (coatlicue
=meta-ideologizing
=differential perception (nepantla
———————
=democratics, an ethical technology: mobilizes the previous four 

so that agencies can select tactics according to political situation

tactics such as
=integrationism
=revolutionary action
=supremacism
=separtism
=anarchism
=political defense of the human or redefinition of the human
=or even defiance of categorizing as “human”

all this becomes 

A PLACE-BASED ECOLOGICAL ACTIVISM 
IDENTIFYING POLITICAL & CULTURAL PLANETARY GEOGRAPHIES

Sandoval's differential consciousness & oppositional consciousness 

Sandoval essay on Google docs   

I highly recommend Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed too. 

Read ahead? Bateson article here. 

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Tuesday of Gaia, we will meet during class time to share our projects, displaying posters and handouts on the walls of our room, walk and talk one-on-one with each other, share questions, observations, excitements! On that Thursday, we will continue to work with the energy generated by the first day of the con, collectively coming up with reflective analysis and more ideas for what comes next!

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graded assignments: paper, poster, learning analysis, logbook, prototyping

Five kinds of assignments are required in this class:

• a research paper with visual handout for con display (enough handout print-outs for all in class), • a research poster for con display, documented with digital pictures (hardcopy in class, electronic to be emailed), • a final learning analysis, • a logbook, • some techno-crafty prototyping activities, some done during class.

The first three: paper, poster, learning analysis, allow you to position the work for the class in various frameworks, or knowledge worlds. In each of these you will work on research, analysis, and critical thinking. Some of this will be in traditional academic forms, some in emerging scholarly practices, but it is possible to combine these also with the techno-crafty delights cons have always shown off as well. And papers and poster projects may be be done with partners or individually, as you choose.

The logbook will help you organize your projects: when you started them, how many drafts you completed, who you worked with, where you are in what you have done, and what still needs to be done. It will be turned in four times during the semester (the first in time for early warning grades), and you won’t get credit for any assignments until the final version is turned in on the last day of class with the final version of the learning analysis. You can download a template for the logbook here. 

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• Gaia: Worlding and feminist action

Week of 19 November:

Gaia Union: peer to peer worlding: click image

“Gaia” is inspired by the environmental interests of FemCon, a feminist gaming convention in Umeå, Sweden. For Gaia you will create either • a paper & handout or • poster & pics (which determined by lot earlier, whichever one you did not do for A Gathering). You may work on these individually or with a partner.

With the help of Nardi, Pearce & Artemesia, or Taylor, you will analyze feminist processes of play, worlding and games as activist actions. You will either begin from • the most urgent feminist issue you care about, exploring gaming and/or virtual world practices that might speak to it; or you will begin from • your own most valued game or virtual world, and analyze its possibilities for the feminist values you most care to embody. ALWAYS make a point of connecting projects to class readings, activities, and discussions. ALWAYS use a standard model for citation and bibliography, even on posters. NOTICE how useful the website Not Your Mama’s Gamer will be here! You may also want to use the web to follow-up or look in greater detail at the kinds of worldings feminisms explore today and ways all of these are promoted in popular and scholarly media.

Remix additions: flip cameras at WMST: Papers and posters may include a range of media creativities, in addition to their analytic aspects. Media fandoms are known for creative work: drawing, mashups, remix, vids, machinima, and more. Any of these may be ADDED to a project if you like. Women’s Studies now has a library of flip cameras for video projects, and you can check one out for a week at a time on a first come, first served basis. Notice that these techno-crafty things are enhancements to the basic project, not a substitute for one, or the only platform! They must be accompanied by a paper or poster no matter what. This is an opportunity to enjoy media learning in alternative forms, but these additions are entirely at your own discretion and pleasure!

Exploring these topics and themes as if at a con means that by attending and listening we will all benefit from the hard work of everyone. Notice that both sorts of projects in both cons should be begun several weeks ahead of their due dates. Not only do you need this time to do any additional research or reading, but to get good grades you need to • write papers in at least three drafts, and • plan out posters carefully to demonstrate both the results of your research and also how you got to those results.

Obviously attending class faithfully and taking good notes will make all this work a lot easier. Lecture materials are displayed on the class website, to be reviewed at any time. In college courses ALWAYS use your projects to demonstrate how you uniquely put together, or synthesize, class readings, mini-lectures and discussion. Make a point of displaying that you are doing all the reading and attending all the classes. Doing this clearly and carefully will demonstrate that this is your own work, and ensure your credit for honesty and for real engagement with the course.

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