Prototyping the Margins

Our perceptions of the future have been conjured via media, cultural references, and select readings as well as fact. In this we receive particular cultural and gendered perspectives, even unconsciously. Prototyping the Margins asks us to re-envision more diverse and inclusive futures, to ensure that they will exist.

Alternate Futures

Alternate Futures is an affirmation of the unique positions people of color, women, and queer people hold in design, technology, and media.

New Mythologies

Like modern communication supports, medieval music manuscripts convey ideas through design. Some are monuments of multimedia design: they include not only music, but symbolic poetry, elaborate manuscript layout with eye-catching visuals, and sometimes allegorical illustrations.

Medieval Multimedia

Humans have long created stories of superhuman/supernatural entities and have sought their guidance through rituals. Now, through artificial and machine intelligence, humans have created inhuman entities with superhuman capabilities.

Digital Borders

In this multidisciplinary course, students will confront the ways new technologies are changing border controls and the regulation of migration. These technologies include automated facial recognition, the usage of other biometric markers, the observing of digital presence and more.

Technologies of Protest

This class offers students opportunities in a diverse and inclusive learning environment to ask questions and take action on critical social justice causes. It brings in experts from The Africa Center to discuss and contextualize these issues in frank and affirmative in-class lectures and activities.