Tagged with "worldcanvass"

The UI’s Obermann Center for Advanced Studies has long been the home of interdisciplinary collaboration, where thinking outside the box isn’t just the result, but the operating principle. On March 1, 2016, Joan Kjaer and her WorldCanvass guests discussed “Taking It to the Streets: Engagement and the Academy” just before the ten year anniversary of the center's week-long institute.

On the morning of Jan. 11, I woke early, poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to reflect. It was an important day, one that had the potential to significantly impact my scholarship and teaching. I wanted to get it right. I was about to join the ranks of nearly 200 other graduate students who, over the last ten years, had participated in the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. Their engagement work — which ranges from collaborating with incarcerated Iowans to creating public art to coordinating disaster relief — both excited and intimidated me as I thought about my own project.

We live in an age of new technology, expecting any day to wake up to yet another jaw-dropping device or a discovery that simply changes everything about the way we live and work. The rate of innovation in the modern age can be breathtaking, but technological advances have jolted humans into new and unfamiliar territory since the dawn of humankind. On February 9, Joan Kjaer and her WorldCanvass guests contemplated the larger implications of the adoption of new technologies—how they change the ways in which individuals interact, the sharing of information, the movement of people and ideas from place to place, and what all of this means to the shape and form of a culture. Below is a ReCap of the event with access to see and hear the full program.

Some believe new technologies are powerful forces that dictate social, cultural and political relations. These “technological determinists” focus on the technology itself, questioning whether it produces positive or negative outcomes in society. Others believe people use technologies in ways that suit existing goals and interests. These “social constructionists” think about new technologies as tools that can be seized, adapted and appropriated by the public. While there is plenty of middle ground between these two perspectives, this dichotomy draws attention to a key question in the study of new technologies. Who has the most power: technology or people? This question, and how it has been answered throughout history and around the world, will be central to an upcoming WorldCanvass discussion, featuring University of Iowa faculty from Communication Studies, Journalism & Mass Communication, and Computer Science. The program, “Encountering New Technology,” will be held at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Iowa City’s nonprofit cinema arts organization FilmScene on 118 E. College St. The program is free and open to the public.

The University of Iowa is ranked among the top 35 public universities in the nation (U.S. News & World Report) and is renowned not only for its academic excellence but for its research profile. But what does it mean to be a ‘research university?’ Joan Kjaer and her WorldCanvass guests discussed the answer to that question from multiple perspectives when they gathered on January 26 for a program called “Research to Real Life.” Below is a ReCap of the event with access to see and hear the full program.

If the phrase "academic research" brings to mind tweedy professors poring over rare manuscripts or bespectacled scientists in lab coats examining glass beakers — you’re probably not alone. Nor is the stereotype entirely wrong; I’ve certainly dressed the part of rumpled geek during my career, to the occasional chagrin of my family. The prolonged and often unglamorous work of studying how social, economic and political forces shaped history, or how the universe operates down to the subatomic level and out at the furthest edges of space can seem mysterious, tedious and irrelevant to people outside of academia.

The University of Iowa is ranked among the top 35 public universities in the nation (U.S. News & World Report) and is renowned not only for its academic excellence but for its research profile. But what does it mean to be a ‘research university?’ WorldCanvass guests will answer that question from multiple perspectives when they gather at Iowa City’s FilmScene at 5 p.m. on January 26 for a program called “Taking it to the Streets: Research to Real Life.” The program is free and open to the public.