In February, scholars Vinay Lal and Michael Lynch engaged in an Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Dialogue about whether the “virtual university might introduce radically new forms of knowledge formation or render certain modes of knowing—or of memory—obsolete.” They asked if knowledge is one thing, transformed by digital technologies, or does “life in the datasphere” reveal a diversity of “knowledges” at work and at play in the world simultaneously? Our March NUDHL meeting continues the dialogue, and opens up the conversation to multiple voices. Though Drs. Lal and Lunch cannot be with us again in person, we want to use their recent visit as an opportunity to continue to probe these crucial questions of the status of knowledge in the shifting technological setting of the present.

Details:
Friday, March 14, 2014 – 10am-noon
Kaplan Seminar Room, Kresge Hall
For more information contact Josh Honn.

Moderated By:

Jillana Enteen, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies, Asian-American Studies, http://www.genderstudies.northwestern.edu/people/profiles/jillana-enteen.html.

Readings:

• Guerlac, Suzanne. “Humanities 2.0: E-Learning in the Digital World.”
• Lal, Vinay. “The Politics of History on the Internet: Cyber-Diasporic Hinduism and the North American Hindu Diaspora.”
• Lynch, Michael P. In Praise of Reason: Why Rationality Matters for Democracy. (Excerpts)
• Lynch, Michael P. “Privacy and the Threat to the Self”
• Lynch, Michael P. “A Vote for Reason”
• All readings are available at http://www.humanities.northwestern.edu/events/dialogue-series.html
• Additional readings:
  •  Patrick J. Deneen, “We’re All to Blame for Moocs,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 June 2013, http://chronicle.com/article/Were-All-to-Blame-for-MOOCs/139519/
  • Steve Kolowich, “QuickWire: Harvard U. Students Are Silenced During MOOC Filming,” Wired Campus, Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 March 2014, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-harvard-u-students-are-silenced-during-mooc-filming/51129
• Post-meeting addendum:
  • Brian Croxall, “The Red Herring of Big Data,” 7 March 2014, http://www.briancroxall.net/2014/03/07/the-red-herring-of-big-data/.
  • Chris Anderson, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete,” Wired, 23 June 2008, http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory (hat tip to Brian Croxall above).
  • Kimberly Christen, “Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness,” International Journal of Communication 6 (2012), 2870–2893, http://www.kimchristen.com/resources/christen6.2012.pdf.