Syllabus Fall 2014

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The Digital Caribbean 
Spring 2014 – CUNY Graduate Center
Wednesday, 4:15-6:15pm; Room 8203
MALS 73500 – Africana Studies: Global Perspectives; Cross listed with ASCP 81500

Professor: Kelly Baker Josephs
Course site: The Digital Caribbean

Caribbean QR

Course Description

Schedule of readings and activities

Bibliography (PDF)

Websites

Readings (For selections from monographs, full book citation given)

Antoni, Robert. As Flies to Whatless Boys. New York; Akashic Books, 2013.

Baptiste, Espelencia, Heather Horst, and Erin Taylor. “Earthquake Aftermath in Haiti: The Rise of Mobile Money Adoption and Adaptation.” Lydian Journal 7 (May 2011).

Baucom, Ian “Charting the ‘Black Atlantic’” Postmodern Culture 8:1 (1997)

Benítez Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Trans. James E. Maraniss. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992.

Best, Curwen. The Politics of Caribbean Cyberculture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Brathwaite, Kamau. “Note(s) on Caribbean Cosmology” River City 16.2 (Summer 1996): 1-17.

—. “Caribbean Man in Space and Time” Savacou 11/12 (September 1975): 1-11.

Brinkerhoff, Jennifer. Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement: . New York; Cambridge UP, 2009.

Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. “Race and/as Technology, or How to Do Things to Race.” Race After the Internet. Eds. Lisa Nakamura and Peter A. Chow-White. London; Routledge, 2012. 38-60.

Drucker, Johanna. “Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing.” LA Review of Books 16 January 2014.

Everrett, Anna. Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Albany; SUNY Press, 2009.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

Harrell, D. Fox. “Cultural Roots for Computing” The Fibreculture Journal : 11 (2008).

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Theorizing Diaspora. Eds. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. 233–247.

—. “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance.” Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Eds Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg. Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1996. 16-60.

Houghton, Edwin and Rishi Bonneville. “Future Troubles: The New Dancehall Economy and Its Implications in a Digital Age” sx salon 3 (February 2011).

Mitchell, W. J. T. “Representation” Critical Terms for Literary Study, Second Edition. Eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1995. 11-22.

Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Paul, Annie. “Log On: Toward Social and Digital Islands” The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature. Eds. Michael A. Bucknor and Alison Donnell. New York: Routledge, 2011. 626-635.

Philp, Geoffrey. “Into the Fray!” sx salon 3 (February 2011).

Scott, David. “On the Question of Caribbean Studies” Small Axe 41 (2013): 1-7.

Straumsheim, Carl. “Is Blogging Unscholarly?” Inside Higher Ed (January 29, 2014).

Thelwalla, Mike and Liwen Vaughanb. “A Fair History of The Web? Examining Country Balance in the Internet Archive.” Library & Information Science Research 26.2 (Spring 2004): 162–176.

Thomas, Deborah. “Caribbean Studies, Archive Building, and the Problem of Violence” Small Axe 41 (2013): 27-42.

Venegas, Cristina. Digital Dilemmas: The State, The Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba. New Brunswick, NJ; Rutgers University Press, 2010.

Walcott, Derek. What the Twilight Says: Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

 

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Grading Policy/Course requirements:

  • Blog posts 30%
  • Blog commenting 20%
  • Resource page 10%
  • Class Participation 15% (including presentations)
  • Final paper/project 25%

Assignments
Below is an overview of each assignment.

Blog Post (Approximately 500 words each) – 6 total required. Based on readings listed for the date assigned. Blog posts are due on Tuesday nights, by midnight, and are to be posted to the course site. These posts are public, and so please compose with a larger audience in mind even as you address the course readings. All students are required to complete the first blog post (for week 2). For the rest of the course, students must complete 5 additional posts from the assigned dates to make a total of 5 for the semester.

Blog commenting (weekly). Blog activity includes weekly commenting on classmates’ posts (including substantial comments). A final count should be upwards of 20 comments for the course.

Resource page. Each student will be responsible for a page of links on a chosen topic which may be organized in any manner the student sees fit. There should be a minimum of 10 annotated links, but this is a very low minimum. There is no maximum.

Bibliography project. Students will work with undergraduate students at Barnard on a Bibliography project. More information to come, but the tentative “researchathon” date is 2 May.

Final Paper/Project. Students will have a choice between a traditional academic paper and a digital project. We will discuss in further detail. Due by midnight on 5/20.

 

 

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