Here, on our class website, you’ll find our most up-to-date schedule, pdfs or links for all the readings, catalogues of our work, etc. Most of our resources are available on the open web, but some materials are copyrighted; to access those, you’ll be prompted to enter a username and a password: ___ + ___
A few notes about the weekly readings/screenings/listenings:
- I believe we can better appreciate the complexity, relevance, and resonance of each of our weekly themes by approaching them from multiple theoretical, historical, practical, and creative directions. That’s why, for each week, I’ve put together a mini “anthology” rather than assigning a single definitive text. Yes, sometimes those reading lists might look intimidatingly long – but the total number of pages hardly ever exceeds 150 (and a lot of those pages are illustrated!), which is a more-than-reasonable workload for a graduate student. Plus, each text on that list is there because it has the potential to add a distinctive voice to our conversation (you should see the ridiculously long lists of readings that didn’t make the cut!).
- That said, my selection of a particular text does not constitute an endorsement of it. Sometimes I choose texts that annoy me, or with which I disagree, for a few reasons: because they’re widely cited and I think it’d behoove you to be aware of them, because I want to allow you to exercise your own judgment, and because I’m pretty sure they’ll make for good conversation – or, at the very least, food for thought.
- We will not be able to address all the readings in our class discussions. Some readings are primarily factual, some are self-explanatory, some simply present interesting illustrations or case studies; we needn’t discuss these sorts of texts in-depth – but they’re still worth your time. They provide valuable nuance and color that will inform our discussions, shape your own understanding, and, ideally, inspire ideas for your own projects. What’s more, I’d rather the readings serve as a web of references that can inspire sustained thinking and even independent research about each week’s themes and the big ideas animating our semester’s work. Our “archive” shouldn’t be bound by a class schedule 🙂
These are useful resources, too:
- Dan Hill’s writing on Medium
- My “smart cities” bookmarks
- NYU Center for Data Science newsletter
- Programmable City @ Maynooth University
- Sidewalk Labs’ weekly newsletter (subscribe @ bottom of page)
- And here’s the website for last spring’s class.