Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Even as we question received cartographies of knowledge and the maps of disciplinary fields, we would do well to ask about not just the shape of what we know or even its geneology, but also and perhaps more fundamentally, about the process of coming to know. This paper engages design thinking and explores its potential to revitalize knowledge making in the humanities. The point of departure for this paper is a common definition of design thinking: the human-centered, empathy-driven process of imagining, creating, testing, and revising responses to critical, highly contextual, dynamic, and messy problems. It is a way of problem framing and solving that values empathy with audiences and users, radical collaboration, ambiguity, a bias toward action, productive failure, iteration, and regular feedback. This paper (1) unpacks key concepts and terms in this definition, (2) suggests practical ways of implementing design thinking in both humanities research and pedagogy, and (3) explores how design thinking resonates with other development in the humanities—from Deleuze’s rhizomic network of multiplicities, to John Dewey’s experiential learning, the maker-space movement, situated cognition, and the generative role of craft knowledge (techne). In so doing this study questions a fundamental presupposition: that knowledge consists in its mapping, and can be stored in an archive. We would do well to consider how knowledge can also lie in its making, that doing and knowing are fundamentally related. After all, cartographies of knowledge have their source in voyages of discovery—a voyage that design thinking can help guide.

Presenters

Rolf Norgaard
Teaching Professor of Distinction, Associate Director Program for Writing and Rhetoric, University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado, United States