Notes 2/22

The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones: Cynthia L. Selfe, Richard J. Selfe and Jr.

It is at the geopolitical borders of countries that the formations of social power, normally hidden, are laid embarrassingly bare-where power in its rawest form is exercised, we began to see how teachers of English who use computers are often involved in establishing and maintaining borders themselves-whether or not they acknowledge or support such a project-and, thus, contributing to a larger cultural system of differential power that has resulted in the systematic domination and marginalization of certain groups of students, including among them: women, non-whites, and individuals who speak languages other than English.

we talk about computer interfaces as maps that act-among other things-the gestures and deeds of colonialism, continuously and with a great deal of success

we can take with increasing seriousness the role of serving as technology critics when we use computers in the classroom and when we work with other teachers to integrate technology within these learning spaces

learn to recognize-and teach students to recognize-the interface as an interested and partial map

of our culture and as a linguistic contact zone that reveals power differentials

also need to teach students and ourselves useful strategies of crossing and demystifying these borders

through working with students and computer specialists to re-design/re-imagine/re-create interfaces that attempt to avoid disabling and devaluing non-white, non-English language background students, and women

for both teachers and students, Giroux notes, the project of eliminating oppression based on class, race, and gender involves "an ongoing contest within every aspect of daily life," a continual project of mapping and re-mapping the educational, political, and ideological spaces we want to occupy

Genre as Social Action: Miller

https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/808846_a2a2ca85431a4ec1847b72000e1b8557.pdf