QSS 30.21 Social Justice and Computing
This course draws on feminist and queer scholarship to examine the intricate relationship between datafication, ubiquitous computing, and social justice, highlighting the politics and impacts of data-driven processes and big data on human lives. One of the key highlights of WGSS engagements with computing history is the focus on the politics and impacts of data-driven processes and big data on human lives. The course will provide a brief introduction to histories of computing and data-driven practices within the Anglo-American tradition, including discussions of the roles that ethics and biopolitics play within these histories. We will explore ways that privacy/security, algorithmic processes, computational environmental impacts, and design have exploited the most vulnerable while increasing affordances for the most privileged. We will also spend significant time learning about new data/computational justice initiatives and develop a robust understanding of how social justice issues like prison abolition, climate change, and equitable health outcomes are at the core of understanding computational cultures. No Computer Science or Data Science background is required, but the course will entail learning about some of the technical history within both fields. Similarly, there are no WGSS prerequisites for the cours but students will be responsibly for learning about anti-racist feminist and queer methods and insights.