Center for Information as Evidence

UCLA Department of Information Studies

 

MARCH 3: GLOBAL CULTURES


• Carlos Alberto Torres, Social Sciences and Comparative Education
• Keith Camacho, Asian American Studies
• Ramesh Srinivasan, Information Studies

 

The impact of globalization on economic and political systems has been well documented by scholars.  Less attention, however, has been paid to the transmission and preservation of knowledge across cultural and ethnic boundaries. The interdisciplinary study of global cultures offers great potential not only to draw local and global communities together, but also to preserve their rich heritage. In the process, scholars continuously find new intersections between diverse fields including anthropology, education, sociology, information studies, and the performing arts.  This panel will address questions such as:  How do Western-dominated and indigenous theories and methodologies relate to one another?  In what ways have scholars abandoned traditional methods of research in favor of an approach that reflects the uniqueness of the cultures at hand? How has emerging technologies empowered or disempowered native cultures?  What place do indigenous epistemologies have inside academia?

 

MARCH 10: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, PART I: TEMPORALITY


•Janice L. Reiff, History
• Robert Fink, Musicology
• Mark R. Morris, Astronomy

 

With powerful new computers and technologies capable of capturing and processing mass amounts of information, scholars are reconsidering time on a macro and micro level.  From seeking answers to the origins of the universe, to historical trends often spanning decades or centuries, to the slight altercation of an electronic rhythmic beat, the accuracy to map change over time has increased dramatically.  With such technical precision, are we any closer to unlocking new knowledge in the humanities and sciences, such as a new comparative framework or aesthetic principle, or does technology simply demand that we readjust the questions worth positing? In what ways does our newfound control over time influence power relations among social groups or institutions, or our dependency on obtaining accurate, reliable data?


 

MARCH 17: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, PART II: SPATIALITY


• Diane Favro, Architecture
• Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Urban Planning
• Todd Presner, German Studies and Digital Humanities

 

With increasingly sophisticated computer technology, scholars can recreate and study environments both past and present.  These environments may consist of a single architectural structure, a natural habitat, or a vast urban landscape.  As a result, interdisciplinary research – understood here as the combination of one or more traditional academic fields with advanced technologies and information systems – has paved new ground in experientialism, public policy, aesthetics, and sociological conditions.  How has the blurring of boundaries between the real and virtual worlds revolutionized academic inquiry?  What knowledge can be gained through the careful reproduction, statistically and virtually, of lived environments?  In turn, as archives and similar knowledge systems shift from concrete buildings to three-dimensional virtual interfaces, how does our command and understanding of spatiality affect our own modes of thinking and conducting research?

 

APRIL 7:  THE HUMAN BODY


• Jeanette Papp, Human Genetics
• Helen Deutsch, English

 

With the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, the human body is considered perhaps more than ever a repository of information, which happens to coincide with a new field referred to by some as “bioepistemology.” In order to tap into its vast potential for knowledge of the human condition, scholars from the sciences and humanities are relying more than ever on innovative interdisciplinary investigative approaches. In the process, they are daringly challenging notions of gender, health, and the self. This discussion will address the benefits and limits of drawing the humanities and medical disciplines closer together as well as the creative and unconventional methods used by scholars to store and access increasing mounds of genetic data about the body.