Seminar in Critical Theory (SECT) - technoSpheres: FutureS of Thinking

The UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) invites applications from innovative, creative thinkers and scholars -- faculty of all ranks, students and IT intellectuals -- to participate in the third annual Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT). Join world-renowned technology, humanities, arts and social science theorists for SECT III.

Event Date: August 14-25, 2006

Event Location: UC Irvine Campus

Application Deadline: March 15, 2006

Program Overview
Participants in the 2006 Seminar will explore new ways of thinking about and with technology. The Seminar will include paired conversations between technological innovators and experimental humanists, around the many issues that engage the human and the technological. The two-week Seminar will also include demonstrations of new technological devices, classroom applications and scholarly practices. Participants will have opportunities to engage with new digital applications in the context of small-group workshops, large-group social networking exercises and art/technology installations. The objective for SECT III is to broaden the participation of humanists in the transformation of spheres of technological experience.

SECT III is being convened by Anne Balsamo , Director of Academic Programs, USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy; Professor, Interactive Media and Gender Studies; and Founding Partner, Onomy Labs -- in partnership with David Theo Goldberg , Director, UC Humanities Research Institute; and Professor, African American Studies and Criminology, Law and Society, UC Irvine.

FEATURING -
John Seely Brown : Former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation; Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
Craig Calhoun : President, Social Science Research Council. Social Science Professor, New York University.
Dan Greenstein : University Librarian for Systemwide Library Planning and the CDL, founding director of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS), and helped found the Resource Discovery Network.
Katherine Hayles : English Professor, UCLA. Author, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics .
Lynn Hershman : Professor Emeritus, UC Davis. A.D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University. Author, The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I .
Geert Lovink : Media theorist and activist. Co-founder of the international mailing list Nettime and The Digital City. Member of Adilkno, the Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge.
Saskia Sassen : Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago. Centennial Visiting Professor, London School of Economics. Chair, Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee, Social Science Research Council.
Larry Smarr : Founding Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology CAL(IT)2 and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

List of Featured Presenters, continued

Conversational Themes
New Ways of Knowing | Cultural Memory in a Digital Age | Networked Publics | Gaming Worlds, Gaming Paradigms | The Urban in Global Networks/The Global in Urban Networks | TechnoSpecies: Artificial/Human/Animal | Digital Mobility | The Humanities and TechnoFutures | The Cultural Work of Technological Reproduction | Educating the Technological Imagination

Demonstrations
Vectors: A Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular | Technological RePlacements | New Narrative Machines | Wi-Fi Bedouin | Among Others

Workshops
Wikis | Blogging | Google Jockeying | Creative Commons | New Genres of Digital Scholarship | History of Electronic Literature | Database Narrative | Multimedia Documentary | Distributed Collaboration in the Humanities | Creation of Digital Archives

Note: SECT is an intensive two-week summer program for graduate students and faculty from the UC system and elsewhere, as well as other scholars, professionals and public intellectuals. The Seminar brings together distinguished instructors and a group of 50-60 students to study a pressing issue or theme in contemporary critical theory, in both its "pure" and "applied" modes. SECT is neither exclusively an introductory survey course nor an advanced research seminar. Rather, it is an academy or "laboratory" where students and faculty at all levels of previous experience can study with scholars involved in important and creative theoretical thought. Truly innovative work is of necessity both fundamental and advanced, hence needs to be presented in ways that are simultaneously accessible and challenging for the widest range of scholars. Participants are encouraged to think experimentally and critically, reflecting on prevailing structures of thought while dynamically engaging intellectual inheritances and pushing for theoretical innovations.

Program subject to change | Graphic: Christine A. Aschan

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