Intro to Surveillance Studies, or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Class is About…

Catalog description

What does it mean to identify as? Or to be identified as? Identification is a practice of self-making, a way that we communicate to ourselves and to others who we are. It is also a practice of surveillance, a way that institutions – from the Department of Education to the CIA drone program, from the doctor to the data consultant – determine who we are. This course takes up these tensions within identification to consider its effects – technological, theoretical, and political – on our contemporary moment. Examining practices of surveillance – or identification technologies – through digital media studies, trans studies, and Black studies, we will reflect critically on concepts such as subjectivity, visibility, and opacity, and on popular representations of surveillance, from the expressions “flying while Muslim” or “walking while trans” to the viral “FBI agent” meme.