Making the Posthuman in Biotechnology, Science Fiction, and Contemporary Art
CHUM 337
Fall 2008
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01
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There is much talk about the posthuman as if it were a singular sort of entity we can all anticipate one day becoming, when in fact what constitutes the posthuman have everything to do with who is making it, who is embodying it, and to what ends. The primary aim of the course will be to ground theories of human transformation in the materiality of real-world undertakings. To this end we will focus specifically on three diverse fields of activity: biotechnology (and biomechanical inventiveness), science fiction, and contemporary performance art. This pragmatic turn aims to help us think about how the complexities of material production effect specific (albeit different in each case) visions, and materializations of posthuman life. Such life will not be limited, in this course, to cyborgs, or other sorts of metal or hybrid men, but will be greatly expanded from these to consider things like worries by recent amputees have about their artificial hands, the feeling of "being in the joint" experienced by surgeons engaged in delicate computer-assisted microscopic surgeries, the parental emotions artificial life programmers feel for their teaming binary code, the relationships (personal, aesthetic, political, perverse) between avatars and their originals, the trobule of fitting five fingers on the hand of a droid even if it exists only in a CGI universe, and the trouble with making artificial intelligence at all. In each case, and others to be examined in some detail in this course, both the scope and the form that the posthuman takes is a result of the particularities of the task at hand.
The course will be organized topically, with approximately the first third devoted to questions and worries about, troubles and experiences with, and real world projects relating to the posthuman in biotechnology, the second third to the same issues in science fiction (divided evenly between written and cinematic works), and the final third to human-machine interactions and biological experimentation in contemporary art. Readings will include both academic--most often, though not exclusively, anthropological--and popular articles and excerpts from books, interviews, novels, films (documentary and fictive), press clippings, and theoretical musings. At least one class will be conducted in Second Life and a field trip is planned to the Humanoid Robotics Lab at MIT. |
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Essential Capabilities:
None |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA CHUM |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Walker Bynum, Caroline. METAMORPHOSIS AND IDENTITY, New York: Zone Books, 2001.
Hayles, Katherine. HOW TO BECOME POSTHUMAN: VIRTUAL BODIES IN CYBERNETICS, LITERATURE AND INFORMATICS, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Helmreich, Stefan. SILICON SECOND NATURE: CULTURING ARTIFICIAL LIFE IN A DIGITAL WORLD, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000.
Smith, Marquard and Joanne Morra eds. THE PROSTHETIC IMPULSE: FROM A POSTHUMAN PRESENT TO A BIOCULTURAL FUTURE.
Boellstorff, Tom. COMING OF AGE IN SECOND LIFE: AN ANTHROPOLOGIST EXPLORES THE VIRTUALLY HUMAN.
Seltzer, Mark. BODIES AND MACHINES, New York: Routledge, 1992.
Suchman, Lucy. HUMAN-MACHINE RECONFIGURATIONS: PLANS AND SITUATED ACTIONS 2nd edition. Cambride: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Smith, Marquard ed. STELARC: THE MONOGRAPH, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 2005.
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Examinations and Assignments:
4 assignments during the term (10 points each), a term-end project (35 points), participation (25 points) |
| Instructor(s): Bakke,Gretchen Anna Times: .M.W... 01:10PM-02:30PM; Location: CFH106; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 18 | | SR major: 0 | JR major: 0 | | |
| Seats Available: -2 | GRAD: 0 | SR non-major: 8 | JR non-major: 8 | SO: 2 | FR: X |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 1 |
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