Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examination of the emergence and shaping of information and communication technologies and science in the digital age. Explores new media and social change between everyday life, social institutions, and various enterprises. Emphasis is placed on social context and relations of power. This course can be repeated twice for credit if the topics are different (up to a maximum of three times).

COURSE DETAILS:

This is a blended course with online lectures and face-to-face tutorials. This course will take a critical humanities perspective in exploring how marginalized identities (Black, Indigenous, incarcerated, transgender, etc.) are continuously surveilled in our society. This course examines how identity is produced, tracked, categorized, and governed through contemporary surveillance systems and AI technologies. Drawing on Black feminist theory, queer and trans studies, Indigenous data sovereignty, critical algorithm studies, and abolitionist theories, the course asks how surveillance produces categories of personhood — and how those categories determine who is protected, targeted, and rendered unintelligible to machines. We will analyze the political, racial, gendered, and economic dimensions of data extraction; explore how algorithmic systems shape social life; and engage with abolitionist, feminist, and decolonial critiques of surveillance. In the process, students will explore the intersections of biometric tracking, facial recognition, predictive analytics, and social media profiling to understand their influence on identity, cultural norms, and systemic biases.

Unit I: Identity, Classification, and Control – In this unit, we trace the historical and political foundations of identity classification systems and explore how identity is structured into societal practices and institutions. By examining how power operates, students will grasp how identity categories are actively produced and monitored.

Unit II: Surveillance and the Politics of Visibility – In this unit, students analyze the role of states, platforms, and institutions in producing regimes of visibility that sort, target, and govern populations. We will critically examine the ways policing, border control, welfare monitoring, and the capturing of biometrics produce forms of hypervisibility to criminalize and oppress marginalized populations.

Unit III: AI Systems and the Reproduction of Inequality – In this unit, students will examine how artificial intelligence systems contribute to the production and amplification of social inequalities. We analyze how AI models are built on histories of racial capitalism, colonial extraction, gender normativity, and ableist assumptions — and how these foundations shape the decisions AI systems make about risk, credibility, worthiness, and belonging. The unit foregrounds abolitionist, feminist, and decolonial critiques to challenge inequalities in AI systems and open space for imagining technological futures grounded in justice rather than optimization.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: