Interconnections (English): Room 1
11:45AM - 13:30PM MADRID CEST (Complutense University of Madrid)
The Problem with Student Surveillance View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cara Miller
With the rise in technology amidst a global pandemic, student surveillance among professors and administrators has become common practice. Google Documents, Canvas, Turnitin, and even basic email platforms all provide opportunities to track students’ academic tasks far beyond the physical space of the classroom. This paper investigates issues of academic technology, surveillance, and power. In particular, I draw on Foucault’s theory of the panopticon to interrogate the surveillance capabilities of Google Drive and the way it extends the authority of the professor and compels students to conform to behavioral standards. I argue that although the use of technology can be useful to student learning—particularly in composition courses where students benefit from clear and prompt feedback on their work—when Google Drive and other forms of technology are used as a surveillance tools, it increases levels of student normalization, self-discipline, and moral development that aligns with dominant ideologies. Ultimately, I argue that the surveillance function of advanced academic technologies undermines the educational mission of the university and perpetuates systems of oppression. It is critical that instructors evaluate their own use of technology through a critical lens that privileges students’ intellectual freedom and development as individuals.
Garden for Medicinal, Aromatic and Nutritional Plants in the Negev
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Aref Rabia Abu
As a result of the interrelationship between human beings and the environment, human impacts on the environment and the environment impacts on humanity. This joint close interconnection operates through resources received from the environment such as mineral deposits, raw materials, energy sources, ecological resources such as the air we breathe and the water we drink. The environment guarantees our physical existence but also serves as a source of tranquility, wonderment, and inspiration that nourish our needs. Correspondently, human beings impact the environment discharging into the atmosphere, the water, and the soil various byproducts of our existence that come back to poison us. In light of the great importance of the environment on the nature of our lives as human beings, it is imperative to engender in pupils' curiosity and a deep concern for matters that define the uniqueness of nature, the environment, and the impact of our society on them. The primary objective of this paper is to describe establishing an ecological center for medicinal, aromatic, and nutritional plants to: 1. Teach children and adults about their natural environment. 2. To serve as a learning center for the preservation of the Arab-Bedouin community’s heritage. 3.To investigate as well as to promote the use of plants to improve human life. 4. To champion and encourage indigenous communities to earn their livelihoods from the ecological environment in harmony with nature, supporting the development of partnerships that promote both community resilience and sustainability of biodiversity
Hypertext at the Early Age of the Printing Press: Sigmund Gossembrot's Fifteenth Century Library and his Practice of Cross-referencing in Digital Reconstruction View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Stolz
Sigmund Gossembrot (1417–1493), a representative of early German humanism, has left a remarkable collection of books that so far has only partially been explored. After completing a busy career as a civil servant in Augsburg, Gossembrot moved to Strasbourg where he joined the convent of the Knights Hospitaller zum Grünen Wörth (the ‘Green Isle’) in order to study his books. Today the surviving volumes are spread in libraries all over Europe (with a certain concentration on the Bavarian State Library in Munich). Gossembrot left numerous annotations on the pages that attest his manifold literary interests and his reading habits, embedded in the social environment of both imperial towns and beyond. The abundant glosses, including many cross-references to other works, also allow the reconstruction of the content of currently lost manuscripts. This paper discusses methods of documenting and examining Gossembrot’s library, including a digital database currently under construction on: www.gossembrot.unibe.ch.
At the Intersection of Race and Colonial Enterprise: Rereading Race in Emile Zola’s L’Argent and Fécondité View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Holly Collins
This paper explores the significant impact that the capitalist colonial enterprise had on the development of ideas about people in the colonies and their visible differences. These differences served as the visual basis for an argument for the superiority of European whites. European powers were thus able to convince their populations that the exploitation of African resources and people to support industrial revolution and growth was within their rights. This “Civilizing Mission” would remain in the imaginary of Western European society for centuries and function as a continued impetus for discrimination. Through the examples laid out in Emile Zola’s writings, particularly those that deal with nineteenth-century capitalist exploits and colonial enterprise, we can observe how ethnocentric selfishness led to an invention and proliferation of racial characteristics. Although fictional literature, Zola’s works were highly popular at the time, regularly published in serial in the press. This allowed his ideas, and other authors’ ideas, to have a widespread impact on the public, thus concretizing racialized conceptions of people of color from the colonies.
