Spring 2024 Book Club

The Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL) will be hosting a voluntary book club this spring focused on inclusivity with technology.  Join GT faculty and staff as we take a deep dive into technology and race.  Find community and support for evaluating the technologies we use in teaching and every day life.

The Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategic Plan identifies inclusive scholarship and research, teaching, and innovation as key values of the strategic plan.  More so, Goal 3’s focus is on innovative and inclusive scholarship and teaching.  The DEI Strategic Plan guides this project proposal, specifically focusing on building community around inclusive initiatives.  The book club will help to promote the DEI Council’s Initiatives on professional development and panel discussions and dialogues.  This professional development opportunity seeks to advance inclusive strategies in scholarship and teaching, while also recognizing the importance of inclusive initiatives for all members of the GT campus.  Therefore, participants in the book club will focus not only on teaching strategies for the classroom, but also in areas of academic advisement, technology, and general strategies for creating and sustaining an inclusive work environment.

The details:
Book: Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin.  The book, along with a companion Field Guide, will be provided.
 

A description of the book is provided below by the book's publisher, Polity Press:
"From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the 'New Jim Code,' she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture." -- Polity Press Book Description

When: The Book Club will meet approximately every two weeks (you will have plenty of time to read a chapter!) for 60 minutes.  Modality of the Book club will be determined by participants. The following weeks have been designated for the Book Club meetings.  Final day/time will be determined by participants.

Week of:

• January 16: Book Club Kick-off Meeting
• January 30: Chapter: Introduction
• February 13: Chapter 1
• February 27: Chapter 2
• March 12: Chapter 3
• March 26: Chapter 4

• April 9: Chapter 5

  Space: Space is limited for the Book Club.  Register early to secure your spot.