Surveillance, Data, & Society

Catalog description

This seminar examines the historical and contemporary relationships between race, gender, class, and sexuality and modern surveillance practices. Students will be introduced to the interdisciplinary theories of surveillance and data studies such as discipline, control, capitalism, privacy, and counter-surveillance. Students will examine and discuss materials related to enslavement, policing and prisons, reality television, workplace surveillance, domestic violence, reproductive rights, (social) media, travel, big data, and machine learning. Seminar discussions will include cases where patriarchal power and racialized systems were used to promote perceptions of security, fear, exposure, and control. As praxis, students will design and produce a data project that uses strategies such as data collection, management, analysis, and/or visualization. All data skills will be taught in this course and all technical skill-levels are welcome.