Foucault for the 21st Century

The Fifth Annual SOCIAL THEORY FORUM will be held on April 16 and 17,

2008 at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. This year’s

conference, titled A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality,

Biopolitics & Discipline in the New Millennium, includes more than 60

papers addressing the contemporary relevance of the work of Michel

Foucault.

As the date approaches, we are happy to announce the publication of

the PRELIMINARY PROGRAM. Please check the conference website:

www.foucaultconference.org

and download the preliminary program.

Teacher as Performer:Unpacking a Metaphor in Performance Theory and Critical Performative Pedagogy

“This survey paper explores the interdisciplinary literature of performance theory and critical performative pedagogy in an attempt to consider metaphorical applications of performance to pedagogy. This exploration involves looking at teaching as performance in the broadest cultural sense of the word – interested more in efficacy of communication and mutual empathetic understanding – than in the more commonly-held economic, technological and political senses of performance which are more interested in setting, raising, and maintaining standards of efficiency and effectiveness (see McKenzie, 2001). In examining these issues in both performance studies and education, the conclusions are that educational researchers and teacher educators can benefit significantly from a critical awareness of the proliferation of metaphors for teaching as performance that highlight both aesthetic and socio-political challenges inherent in a life in the classroom.”

Link

Book: Perception, Technology, and Life-Worlds / Free chapters

The Japanese philosopher of technology, Dr. Junichi Murata has written a book

called Perception, Technology, and Life-Worlds

published in 2007 with chapters on Consciousness and the Mind-Body

Problem, Perception and Action, The Multi-Dimensionality of Colors, Why is

Technology a Fundamental Problem of Philosophy?, Technology and Life-Worlds,

Creativity of Technology, Pragmatism and the Ethics of Technology, and From

Challenger to Columbia.

The entire contents of the book can be found at:

Link

New Book from MIT: HCI Remixed

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11330

HCI Remixed

Reflections on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Community

Edited by Thomas Erickson and David W. McDonald

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

Over almost three decades, the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has produced a rich and varied literature. Although the focus of attention today is naturally on new work, older contributions that played a role in shaping the trajectory and character of the field have much to tell us. The contributors to HCI Remixed were asked to reflect on a single work at least ten years old that influenced their approach to HCI. The result is this collection of fifty-one short, engaging, and idiosyncratic essays, reflections on a range of works in a variety of forms that chart the emergence of a new field.

An article, a demo, a book: any of these can solve a problem, demonstrate the usefulness of a new method, or prompt a shift in perspective. HCI Remixed offers us glimpses of how this comes about. The contributors consider such HCI classics as Sutherland’s Sketchpad, Englebart’s demo of NLS, and Fitts on Fitts’ Law–and such forgotten gems as Pulfer’s NRC Music Machine, and Galloway and Rabinowitz’s Hole in Space. Others reflect on works somewhere in between classic and forgotten–Kidd’s “The Marks Are on the Knowledge Worker,” King Beach’s “Becoming a Bartender,” and others. Some contributors turn to works in neighboring disciplines–Henry Dreyfuss’s book on industrial design, for example–and some range farther afield, to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Taken together, the essays offer an accessible, lively, and engaging introduction to HCI research that reflects the diversity of the field’s beginnings.