Readings

Please read the following before the first class of the course:
• Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, and James Smithies, “‘Object of Study’: Digital Humanities and Critical Infrastructure Studies” (manuscript for Introduction to the forthcoming Critical Infrastructure Studies and Digital Humanities; available only to class members on the course Canvas site). Read only pp. 1-8 
• Jan Zalasiewicz, et al., “Scale and Diversity of the Physical Technosphere: A Geological Perspective” (2017) 
• Bill Brown, “Thing Theory” (2001) 
• Jane Bennett, “The Force of Things: Steps toward an Ecology of Matter” (2004) 
• Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, or How to Make Things Public” (under “Downloads” on the page, download the first item: “Catalogue Text, English”) (2005) Read only first 4 pages.

Readings

• Susan Leigh Star, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure (1999)
• Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, “Building Information Infrastructures for Social Worlds: The Role of Classifications and Standards” (1998) 
• Bruno Latour, Introduction to Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2007)   Read only pp. 1-9.

Readings

• Large Technical Systems (LTS) Theory: Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (1983) (Read the introduction)
• ANT Theory: Bruno Latour, “On Technical Mediation—Philosophy, Sociology, Genealogy” (1994) 

Readings

• Lisa Parks, “‘Stuff You Can Kick’: Toward a Theory of Media Infrastructures” (2015)   (alternative link for downloadable PDF)
• Lisa Parks, “Earth Observation and Signal Territories: Studying U.S. Broadcast Infrastructure through Historical Network Maps, Google Earth, and Fieldwork” (2013) 
• Nicole Starosielski, “Fixed Flow: Undersea Cables as Media Infrastructure” (2015), pp. 53-70 in Signal Traffic, ed. Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski
• Benjamin H. Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (2016), pp. 41-72.
  • Concentrate on the sections numbered 10 (“How Platforms Work”), 11 (“Stack as Model”), 14 (“The Stack We Have”), and 15 (“The Layers of The Stack”)
  • For a brief gloss on Bratton and a compact description of the Internet stack he in part discusses (“TCP/IP stack”), see Alan Liu, “Toward a Diversity Stack: Digital Humanities and Diversity as Technical Problem” (2020), pp. 133-135

• Optional:
  • Shannon Mattern, “Mission Control: A History of the Urban Dashboard” (2015)
  • Lisa Gitelman, “Holding Electronic Networks By the Wrong End” (2013)
  • Jer Thorp, “All the Names: Algorithmic Design and the 9/11 Memorial” (2011) [archived copy in Internet Archive; wait for it to load]

Readings

• Sheila Anderson, “What Are Research Infrastructures?” (2013) (read pp. 4-11 and 18  of article)  (Pre-print version if article is inaccessible; read pp. 1-5 and 10-11 of the pre-print)
• Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, and James Smithies, “‘Object of Study’: Digital Humanities and Critical Infrastructure Studies” (manuscript for Introduction to Critical Infrastructure Studies and Digital Humanities, forthcoming). Read  pp.  9-13 
• Kim Gallon, “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” (2016)
• Jessica Marie Johnson, “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads” (2018)
• Alan Liu, “Toward a Diversity Stack: Digital Humanities and Diversity as Technical Problem” (2020)
• Because an important issue in thinking about DH and infrastructure is the nature of “archives,” please also read in preparation this work in the field of archival history and theory: Luciana Duranti, “Archives as a Place” (1996).
  • Optionally: you may also look at the following two works on the idea of respect des fonds:
    • Kate Theimer, “Archives in Context and as Context” (2012)
    • Jefferson Bailey, “Disrespect Des Fonds: Rethinking Arrangement and Description in Born-Digital Archives” (2013)]

This class will be devoted to interim reports and discussion of ideas for research blog posts (or research paper) and “Starter Kits.”  These “interim reports” can be informal, but students  are welcome to prepare materials to show in advance (e.g., documents, online resources, slide shows). We’ll use an in-class Zoom meeting to share screens. See Canvas announcement of meeting URL.)

The report should be about 7 minutes long (followed by  discussion). Total time devoted to each student will be 15 minutes.

Readings

• Example of a “Starter Kit”: Event page for the Romanticism and Critical Infrastructure Studies Seminar at NASSR 2018 (browse the page). (See also examples of starter kits created by graduate students in previous versions of this course.)

Readings

• First Things First: Water, Sewers, Roads…. Browse the following three articles quickly to get a sense of some of the basic parameters of the [infra]structural racism problem:
  • Nikhil Anand, “The Banality of Infrastructure” (2017)
  • Johnny Miller, “Roads to Nowhere: How Infrastructure Built on American Inequality” (2018)
  • [Optional: Sacoby M. Wilson, et al., “Built Environment Issues in Unserved and Underserved African-American Neighborhoods in North Carolina” (2008) ]
• Adrienne R. Brown, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (2019) – Read the following only:
  • Chap. 1, “Introduction: Race in Three Dimensions”
  • Chap. 2, “Architecture and the Visual Fate of Whiteness” (pp. 35-43 only)
• Ara Wilson, “The Infrastructure of Intimacy” (2016)
• Jonas van der Straeten and Ute Hasenöhrl, “Connecting the Empire: New Research Perspectives on Infrastructures and the Environment in the (Post)Colonial World” (2016)

Readings

• Steven J. Jackson. “Rethinking Repair” (2014) 
• Jérôme Denis and David Pontille, “Material Ordering and the Care of Things” (2014)
• Thomas Fisher, “Fracture Critical” (2009)
• Michael Ezban, “The Trash Heap of History” (2012)
  (Note: Places Journal has a pop-up alert about cookies that makes its articles unusable in iOS Safari if you have “block cookies” turned on.)
• Michelle Ty, “Trash and the Ends of Infrastructure” (2015)

Readings

• Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of the Dead (1938).

• Tim Dayton, Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead” (2003), pp. 1-29 (available only to class members on the course Canvas site)

Presentations of “Starter Kits”

In presenting their “starter kits,” students should give an overview but also focus on one or two highlights.

A Note About Access to Reading Materials For This Course

All readings are online. Paywalled articles can be accessed over the UCSB network (or from off-campus by using the campus Pulse VPN service or the campus Library Proxy Server. You can also try to find open-access versions of paywalled materials using the Unpaywall extension for the Chrome or Firefox browsers. (Advice: It is a good idea to download materials as early as possible in case, for example, PDFs that are currently available open-access, on the open net, or through a UCSB Library digital database subscription later become inaccessible.)

Because so many readings are online (an increasingly prevalent trend in college courses), students will need to develop a method or workflow for themselves that optimizes their ability to study the materials. While everyone has their own personal preferences and technical constraints, the following guide includes suggested options for handling online materials:

Guide to Downloading and Managing Online Readings