Vista of Marin Headlands Institute, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

We are happy to announce the third experimental “California STS Workshop on Translation and Innovation”.

 

It will be held in June 26-28 (all-day Friday to Sunday) again at the Marin Headlands Institute, a stunning location on the beach just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco http://www.yni.org/hi/

 

The Workshop will feature STS research into the nature of innovation as well as STS as a form of Innovation Studies. Translational Research has been a growing buzzword for a decade and today can be seen in the increasing pressure to make research “valuable” from the get-go. Therefore the changing nature of value in research is a key field for our research. All California faculty and graduate students working around STS are welcome!

  

So far, it seems that many faculty will be able to attend and we hope around 40-60 graduate students participating. (In 2007 we had 39 grads and 6 faculty and last year we had 55 students and 6 faculty).

  

Friday 26:

12:00-1:00 p.m.:           Lunch!

1:00-3:30 p.m.:             Introductions: STS in 3 minutes

4:00-6:00 p.m.:             Dissertation Proposal Groups

6:00-7:00 p.m.:             Dinner!

 

 

Saturday 27:

8:00-9:00 a.m.:             Breakfast!

9:00-11:00 a.m.:           Mini-Workshop: “Problem Based Learning curriculum in STS” by Brian Dolan

11:00-12:00 p.m.:         Tom Boellstorff will introduce some guidelines for his workshop on Sunday.      

12:00-1:00 p.m.:           Lunch!

1:00 3:30 p.m.:             Writing/Granting/Jobbing Groups (self-organize)

4:00-6:00 p.m.:             Mini-Workshop: “SF Borderlands” by Eben Kirksey and Marnia Johnston

6:00-7:00 p.m.:             Dinner!

 

 

Sunday 28:

8:00-9:00 a.m.:             Breakfast!

9:00-11:00 a.m.:           Mini-Workshop: “Virtual Worlds” by Tom Boellstorff

11:00-12:00 p.m.:         Lessons and Plans for Next Year

12:00-1:00 p.m.:           Lunch!

 

“Virtual worlds”

by Tom Boellstorff

 

This workshop will help people think about how to use ethnographic methods to think about virtual worlds, social networking sites, blogs, etc. Since we have extremely limited internet, we’ll turn the lemon of limited computers/Internet access into lemonade! There will be two activities:

 

#1 PostBook. We will create a post-it networking site on the walls. We’ll watch it grow and see what people do with it, and then talk about how to analyze it and by extension social networking sites.

 

#2 Actual-world fieldnotes. We’ll treat the Marin Headlands site as a virtual virtual world, and people will be assigned short field entries focusing on placemaking, sociality, subjectivity, and governance. Then we’ll discuss what we find from this (and the PostBook exercise) in light of the readings.

 

Tom will bring some pens and post-it notes, but asks that students bring along anything they have laying around that might prove interesting to work with for this exercise: more post-it notes, tacks, small pieces of paper, string, scissors, tape, and anything else that crosses your mind (within reason!).

 

 

Readings:

BARNES, J.A.

(1954). “Class and committees in a Norwegian island Parish”. Human Relations 7(1): 39-58.

 

REED, Adam

(2008). “ ‘Blog this’: surfing the metropolis and the method of London”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14(2): 391-406.

 

Recommended:

 

BOELLSTORFF, Tom

(2003). “Dubbing culture: Indonesian gay and lesbi subjectivities and ethnography in an already globalized world”. American Ethnologist 30(2): 225-242.

All readings are available at the end of this page!

“Problem Based Learning curriculum in STS”

by Brian Dolan

 

The session as will be a brainstorming/share ideas and experiences session about how we teach STS, how we imagine our learning objectives, and how we might implement a problem based learning approach (modified case-based studies) to go beyond more conventional reading/discussion seminars.

Readings:

 

DAHLAGREN, Madeleine Abrandt and Guilla ÖBERG

(2001). “Questioning to learn and learning to question: structure and function of problem-based learning scenarios in environmental science education”. Higher Education 41(3): 263-282.

 

GALISON, Peter

(2008). “Ten problems in history and philosophy of science”. Isis 99(1): 111-124.

 

All readings are available at the end of this page!

  

 

“SF Borderlands”

By Eben Kirksey / Marnia Johnston

 

In this workshop we will create an ethnographic para-site on the borderlands of San Francisco—where science fictions and speculative fabulations meet up with actual robots and living chimera.  We will collectively invent some original tales that speak to our anxieties, hopes, and theoretical concerns.  Dividing up into groups, each with their own robot or semi-living being, we will be given a mission from Anna Tsing’s Game of Global Futures.  You might be asked to “corrupt a nation’s government” or “revitalize an ancient philosophy.”  Each group will produce a plausible story (possibly with a multi-media slide show) that fulfills the mission and that speaks to broader concerns in the STS literature.

 

Readings:

 

TSING, Anna and Elizabeth POLLMAN

(2005). “Global futures: the game”. In: ROSENBERG, Daniel and Susan HARDING (eds.), Histories of the future, pp. 105-122. Durham and London, Duke University Press.

 

Recommended:

 

DUMIT, Joseph

(2008). “Foreword: Biological feedback”. In: da COSTA, Beatriz and Kavita PHILIP (eds.), Tactical biopolitics. Art, activism, and technoscience, pp. xi-xiv. Cambridge and London, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (MIT).

 

MARCUS, George E.

(2006). “Notes on the Contemporary Imperative to Collaborate”. Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC).

 

All readings are available at the end of this page!

 

The wonderful advantage of the Marin Headlands is that $90/day or approx. $200 total provides dorm room sleeping and three excellent organic meals a day. We are hoping to raise money from across campuses, and ideally you will only have to arrange your own transportation. (Last year many people commuted from the Bay Area as it is only about 30 min from most locations). At the moment what we need from you is a commitment to attend since we need to give the Headlands an accurate headcount a month in advance and be financially responsible for that count. So if you would like to attend, please let us know as soon as possible (by May 15 at the very latest), and to help firm up the commitments we will need a $50 deposit by May 20. Last year the cost ended up being $55/person for the whole thing including room & meals). We think we will be able to raise the rest of the money (with your help) so hopefully this is all you will need to pay.

Deadlines:

May 15: Commitment to participate.

May 20: Send $50 deposit. 

Send your $50 registration made out to “UC Regents” to: 

Nicole Gasteiger

Assistant Account Manager

1241 Social Science & Humanities Bldg.

One Shields Avenue

Davis, CA 95616

ngasteiger@ucdavis.edu

You can check on-line the latest news about the Workshop here or at: http://sts.ucdavis.edu/summer-workshop

If you have any questions, please reply to this email address: cal.sts.network@gmail.com

 

Or address them directly to: Joe Dumit (dumit@ucdavis.edu) or Andres Barragan (cabarragan@ucdavis.edu)