Spring 2015 Technology & Democracy Workshop (GEOG 650)

Spring 2015 Technology & Democracy Workshop (GEOG 650)

Instructor: Scott Kirsch      email: kirsch@email.unc.edu

Are our technological choices open to democratic participation?  How are the relations between technology and democracy being reconfigured, and how might they be?  GEOG 650  Technology & Democracy Workshop is a research-oriented experiential learning course open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Students explore political, cultural, and geographical dimensions of technological change around key social and environmental issues. During Spring 2015, course themes will include geographies of energy and waste, with a focus on North Carolina settings.   Students produce digital atlases, including original maps and reproductions of archival images, and publish them on websites created through UNC’s Digital Commons initiative.  Bringing together a combination of seminar, research workshop, and experiential and service learning approaches*, student research groups work in collaboration with community partners and UNC faculty and graduate students to produce and communicate research that addresses important questions impacting North Carolina communities.