Welcome. Thank you for your participation in the course. Here's to an interesting semester.
I would like you to use this page to enter a brief personal profile.
Jim Collier. I am your humble instructor. If you have questions at any time regarding the class, or this wiki, do not hesitate to ask. Let me offer some reasoning behind the origin of the theme for the class. As you will see from the course design, I am interested in philosophical questions — I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate and my graduate work involved a fair amount of the philosophy of science, the social sciences, and sociology, in particular. Part of this work involves "social epistemology" — a concern with how we should organize and govern the processes that generate knowledge. The model we associate with successfully producing knowledge comes from the natural sciences. So, social epistemology involves questions of how, as a democratic society, we should pursue science. I am also interested in extending social epistemology's normative project to inquiry in the humanities. Now, to the personal stuff: I'm originally from Richmond, Virginia and grew up near the University of Richmond. My step father graduated from Tech in 1943 — the "Old Guard." I've been at Tech on (mostly) and off since 1979 — my freshman year. So I know a bit about about university and town lore. My wife, Monique, has just returned to school and is pursuing a degree in Science and Technology Studies (that's my background as well). We met in Durham, North Carolina. We have a cat, Spenser. I am a fan of "new grass" music and New Grass Revival in particular (ah, 1980's bluegrass). And I play a little mandolin … see Mom, those ten years of piano lessons were worth it! I've become a fan of the university-based lipdub. UBC Vancouver seems to have raised the bar — or glass as it were.
Spenser! And, yes: The Internet is Made of Cats!
Please add your profile below. Thanks.
Crystal Allene Cook. An eighth generation Appalachian originally from Bluefield, WV, in the early '80s my family relocated to Eleanor (a former WPA town named indeed for that Eleanor) in Putnam Co., part of WV's Chemical Valley. From there, I went on to study history and Russian/German at Barnard College in NYC. After living in Moscow during the last days of the Soviet Union, I switched from pursuing a career as a journalist to follow my interest in creative writing and my commitment to social change through teaching and pedagogy. Along with a Master in the Science of Teaching (aka "pedagogy") from the New School for Social Research in NYC and a Master in Fine Arts, Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles I have also clocked more than 10,000 hours as a teacher/instructor/non-profit executive on youth, education, women's, and media issues in NYC, Hollywood, Europe, West Virginia, and the South Caucasus. In 2004-05, I spent 10 months as an at-large creative writing Fulbright Research Scholar in the South Caucasus, examining the lingering effects of the Armenian genocide as well as the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and in 2008 released the novel Bombardirovka (The Bombing), set during breakdown of the Soviet Union. From 2006 - 2008, for the actress Geena Davis I developed and led a non-profit that works on gender issues in the entertainment industry.
In 2009, I decided to re-focus my social change and theory energy on my home region and similar de-industrialized areas. A 2011 NSF Graduate Fellowship recipient, I come to Science and Technology Studies open to absorb and learn (and change!) but currently with strong interests in
- Deindustrialized Communities: the role of technology (and policy) in creating deindustrialized communities and the role of technology in supporting self-determination, especially in communities in economic decline (think a boomtown now bust rather than a place just now developing)
- Education: education focused on the local or place-based education; the false dichotomies between humanities and science/technology education; gender and science/technology/technical education; education and self-determination
- Story-telling and technology: the impact of technology on what a story is, the stories we tell, how we tell them, and who tells them
I now split my time between Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, and Union Grove, NC, where my husband and I are setting up a design site and center for sustainable living and regenerative agriculture (http://www.weareallfarmers.org). In my "spare" time, I try to get some long-standing creative projects finished, take dance lessons, and occasionally play E-flat tuba in a band or two. And now for the important stuff: Professor Collier and I have matching cats. This is my cat Carlitas, currently housed at my mother's in WV till we get the old sharecropper's house in NC in good enough shape for her to be there (if my elderly mother, i.e., can stand to part with her. As heartbreaking as it is to me, we might end up leaving her there for company for my mom).
David Duckett. I am a sleepwalker extraordinaire and syllable engineer working on his M.A. in English with no idea as to what the future holds next. I received my B.A. in literature, language, and culture from Virginia Tech in 2009, worked for a year as a technical editor, and then was fortunate enough to be accepted to graduate school. I enjoy listening to other points of view.
Alex McCarthy. English MA. I'm a recent graduate of VT (BA, professional writing), and at this stage in my as yet short career, I'm interested in lots of things and no one thing. (They say don't go to graduate school experimentally—well, too bad.) I work an assistantship at Faculty Development Institute where I get to dabble in web design/technologies/administration, teaching, and the usual technical writing and editing that I've been doing part-time with Learning Technologies for four years. I enjoy graphic and document design as well and have a background in classics and art history that I miss often. When I'm not busy with this or that, I enjoy running, hiking, letter-writing, microblogging, and training my canine companion in the dog sport of agility. Below is a photo of said canine.
Robert Uren. My son is singing variations of “Take On Me”; right now it’s a mash-up, but I don’t know what’s being mashed with it. I filtered a lifetime of watching a lot of TV and feeling a little sad through a devotion to David Foster Wallace to write a creative master’s thesis at Sam Houston State, part of which thesis got me into the MFA program here at VT despite the program’s early efforts to reject me (someone had to suddenly resign her spot). That thing with the “, which [noun],” where you drop in the antecedent after the relative pronoun because it isn’t in the most obvious (read: correct) position immediately preceding the comma, or, more often, because the antecedent for the “which” is not a single word, but rather the previous noun phrase (or entire clause or whatever), which extended antecedent can nevertheless be reconstituted in a word (or two) for the purposes of the ensuing subordinate clause…that’s a DFW thing. Also, long sentences. So I guess I’m still completely and nauseatingly under his spell. In a recent NYT Magazine piece, Maud Newton pointed out that lesser minds have adopted some of Wallace’s baser habits, with disastrous (prose-wise) results (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all). So if you’re wondering why this has been such a vilely composed profile, that’s why.
Kate Natishan I'm an English M.A. here at Tech, pursuing my interests in medieval literature, postmodern theory, mythopoeia, and the mythic arts. I received my B.A. from McDaniel College in western Maryland after writing a senior thesis on the changing paradigms of the hero and gender in comic books. Next up is, hopefully, is a PhD program where I can continue geeking out with like-minded individuals. If that doesn't happen, then I'll probably drop out and co-found a band of gypsies with my brother. I'm still writing about comic books, making/altering books (the hand-bound kind), hanging out at Renaissance festivals, and pondering my place in the future of the academy as well as my professional (and occasionally personal) identity. Obligatory pet pictures follow: Yogi (lab) and Bear (mastiff), Boo and Shaggy (cats), Gunner and Gracie (horses). They are my babies.
