Category: Ethics
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Lessons from Rhythms of Anger(s): Learning to Listen to them
Lessons from Rhythms of Anger(s): Learning to Listen to them Anger is my crutch I hold myself upright with it —Chrystos, I Walk in the History of My People Women of Color in America have grown up within a symphony of anger at being silenced at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, […]
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Race, Racism, and Scholarship on Premodern Race Today
Dear colleagues, It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on HASTAC—for which, my deep apologies—but just before the holidays, I published a blog essay entitled “Why the Hate? The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, and Race, Racism, and Premodern Critical race studies today”: https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2020/12/why-hate-invention-of-race-i… The essay uses a 46-page screed (published as a book […]
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January 2021 is not June 2020
The attempted coup yesterday and its contrast with the Black Lives Matter movement invites serious reflection about the difference in motivations between a seditious, antidemocratic personality cult, and legitimate dissent. Prejudice long held that the already powerful will do what is just and what is orderly, since the powerful are order by definition. Yesterday proved […]
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A Philosophical Review So Far of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me
“But all our phrasing … serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, […]
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The Problem of Defining Civilization
“Civilized” is often used as loaded ethical language. Traditionally, whenever we praise human action, we call it “civilized,” whether it is table manners or peacemaking. This use of the word civilized leads us to the assumption that civilization is good, and hunter-gatherer culture bad. The view that civilization is bad and hunter-gatherer culture […]
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Surveillance Rhetorics – Issue 2
“Lyft Atlanta” by danxoneil is licensed under CC by 2.0 News about ride-sharing services seem to be popping up wherever I go. I used an Uber for the first time this past fall when I traveled to Georgia for a conference (too far for me to drive). I found the experience interesting not just because […]
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Surveillance Rhetorics Newsletter – Issue 1
Early on in my coursework I started to examine the rhetorical implications of surveillance, thinking epitomized by the rather broad question: “What can rhetoric tell us about surveillance and also what can surveillance tell us about rhetoric.” This series of newsletters is an attempt to answer this question. I plan to pull from an interdisciplinary […]
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Can We Do Better Than a 10 Year Gap in Knowledge (re: digital privacy, ethics, etc)?
I have been chewing on a topic and I could use others’ help. I, like many others, am frustrated by the enormous time gap between scholarly understanding of the privacy issues in digital media technology here in the U.S. and public and political awareness. This is an area of research and teaching for me, so I’ve […]
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It Is a Busy Time for Tech & Ethics
Recently we have seen a lot of bad news about digital technologies, social media platforms, and data breeches. A part of me hesitates to call it ‘news’ since most of what’s now part of public/popular knowledge has been known to those who work on social technology and information technology research for some time (as in a […]
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First Blog: #ToStartAConversation
*** Trigger Warning: This blog post and/or references, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors. *** #MeToo #TimesUp #WhyWeWearBlack #RapeCultureIsWhen #LarryNassar #HarvyWeinstein #RapeCrisis #SexualAssault #StanfordRapist #BaylorScandal #CampusSexualAssault #ThingsLongerThanBrockTurnersRapeSentence #WomensMarch #InvestigateUSAGymnastics In the last year, many of these hashtags have circulated the internet and social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and even on websites that don’t typically use hashtags were covered with these phrases. […]