Assignments and Grading

Pick topics and readings: Students (individually or in small groups) will be responsible for selecting a topic within the area of pragmatic technology and leading a class session on that topic. The first step is to prepare a brief description of the chosen topic and list several tentative readings for your session. Readings may be selected from any of the texts listed on the syllabus, or from other sources (you're encouraged to start with the required texts). (5%)

Annotations of readings: Produce annotations for three readings of your choice. Your chosen readings can be books, chapters, journals, journal articles, websites, etc. You may want to select readings that are related to your chosen topic for the class session you will be leading. Your annotation should be a paragraph or two, with some substance, which may include your evaluative comments.

Add you bibliographic entry with your annotation to the Pragmatic Technology Bibliography. Check first to see whether the article is already in the database. If so, you can send a message to Steven Poulakos asking him to add the annotation. (5%)

Keywords: Produce an analysis of one keyword of your choice. This keyword is not just an index term as in the bibliography, but a core concept for the field. The analysis is a short essay (1-2 pp.) on the definition, history, and multiple uses of a term, which is central to understanding a text or a field of study. (5%)

Session template: Develop a plan for a class session you will lead. This will typically include several readings and possibly some activity for students prior to the class, and a scheme for how the class time can be used to examine those readings or apply them to some problem. (5%)

Session leading: Lead a class session on a topic of your choice. (15%)

Site contribution: Contribute to building a web resource on pragmatic technology. (15%)

Analysis of practice: Choose an area of activity in which you can apply a pragmatic technology analysis. For examples, see Dewey's logical theory, edited by Burke, et al., in which various authors explore questions of value or practice using ideas from pragmatism. (30%)

Participation: Active participation throughout is assumed, both for your own learning and to help others learn. This occurs both in class and in the LEEP bulletin boards. (20%)

Enter assignments and view feedback to them in the C-Base online assignment management system.

Pragmatic Technology Readings

Required readings

Bowker, Geoffrey C., & Star, Susan Leigh (1999). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Burke, F. Thomas, Hester, D. Micah, & Talisse, Robert B. (Eds.) (2002). Dewey's logical theory: New studies and interpretations. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

Dewey, John (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier.

Headrick, Daniel R. (2000). When information came of age: Technologies of knowledge in the age of reason and revolution, 1700-1850. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hickman, Larry A. (1990). John Dewey's pragmatic technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Menand, Louis (2001). The metaphysical club . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Nye, David E. (1990). Electrifying America: Social meanings of a new technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Schon, Donald A., Sanyal, Bish, Mitchell, William J. (Eds.) (1999). High technology and low-income communities: Prospects for the positive use of advanced information technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.

West, Cornel (1989). The American evasion of philosophy: A genealogy of pragmatism. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Recommended texts

Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: Education, knowledge, and action research. London: Falmer.

Dewey, John (1920). Reconstruction in philosophy. New York: Beacon.

Freire, Paolo (2002). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Jones, Steve. CyberSociety 2.0: Revisiting CMC and community. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Kramarae, Cheris (1988). Technology and women's voices: Keeping in touch. New York and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Smith, Merritt Roe, & Marx, Leo (Eds.) (1994). Does technology drive history? The dilemma of technological determinism. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Useful additional texts

Ittelson, W. H. (1952). The Ames demonstrations in perception.. princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bentley, Arthur F. (1954). Inquiries into inquiry: Essays in social theory. Boston: Beacon.

Ellul, J. (1973, orig. English, 1964; French, 1954). The technological society (tr. J. Wilkinson). New York: Alfred A Knopf.

Ellul, J. (1980, orig. French, 1977). The technological system (trans. J. Neugroschel). New York: Continuum.

Feenberg, Andrew (2002). Transforming technology: A critical theory revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1994). Truth and method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum.

Hickman, Larry (2001). Philosophical tools for technological culture:ĘPutting pragmatism to work. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hoy, David Couzens (1993). Heidegger and the hermeneutic turn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Illich, Ivan (1989). Tools for conviviality. Berkeley, CA: Heyday.

Kelley, E. C. (1947). Education for what is real. New York: Harper.

Light, Andrew (Ed.) (1998). Environmental pragmatism: Environmental philosophies. New York: Routledge.

Marx, Karl (1932). The economic and philosophical manuscripts (orig. written 1844; trans. Martin Milligan). In Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Moore, A. (1910). Pragmatism and its critics . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Noble, David F. (1977). America by design: Science, technology, and the rise of corporate capitalism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Plato. Phaedrus. In Benjamin Jowett (1991, trans.) On Homosexuality: Lysis, Phaedrus, and Symposium. Buffalo: Prometheus.

Powasek, D. M. (2002). Design for community: The art of connecting real people and virtual places. Indianapolis: New Riders.

Rogers, Everett M. (1986). Communication technology: The new media in society. New York: Macmillan Free Press.

Wajcman, Judy (1991). Feminism confronts technology. Cambridge: Polity.

Weizenbaum, Joseph (1976). Computer power and human reason. San Francisco: Freeman.

Wiener, Norbert (1954). Human uses of human beings: Cybernetics and society, 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Articles

The following articles are all online. A printed packet can be purchased from TIS Books.

Bishop, A. P., Mehra, B., Bazzell, I., & Smith, C. (2000, June). Socially grounded user studies in digital library development. First Monday, 5 (6).

Bishop, A. P., Bazzell, I., Mehra, B., & Smith, C. (2001, April). Afya: Social and digital technologies that reach across the digital divide, First Monday, 6(4).

Bishop, A. (2000, February). Communities for the new century. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 43(5).

Bruce, B. C. (1997). Literacy technologies: What stance should we take? Journal of Literacy Research, 29(2), 289-309.

Bruce, B. C. (1998, November). Dewey and technology. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 42(3), 222-226.

Bruce, B. C., & Bishop, A. P. (2002, May). Using the web to support inquiry-based literacy development. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 45(8), 706-714.

Bruce, B. C., & Hogan, M. P. (1998). The disappearance of technology: Toward an ecological model of literacy. In D. Reinking, M. McKenna, L. Labbo, and R. Kieffer (Eds.), Handbook of literacy and technology:  Transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. 269-281). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Heidegger, Martin (1977). The question concerning technology. In The question concerning technology and other essays(pp. 3-35). William Lovitt, trans. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Hickman, Larry A. (2002, June 1). Democracy and global citizenship: Creating value by educating for social reform. Presentation at the Boston Research Center.

Kaufman, Walter. The art of reading. In the future of the humanities.

Mcreynolds, Phillip (2002, March 7-10). Community, communication, and emotions: A pragmatic approach to the moral standing of non-human animals. Paper presented at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Annual Meeting, Portland, Maine.

Peirce, Charles S. (1868). Some consequences of four incapacities. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2, 140-157.