Saturday, April 15, 2006

Preparing to meet Sheryl Hamilton.

I am following my dad's advice to meet with professors of the law department to help my application along. To do this I have a meeting being scheduled with Sheryl Hamilton a department of law professor. I have read some of her M.A. on cyber feminism. I have also gathered all the reading for her course in communications law. I read some of this material. She feels that a productive meeting will help my application. Here I am going to list the gender books I am reading at present. I will also list the gender books I am borrowing or own but am not actively reading. I will also list books I have read in the past about gender and computing.
These are two books that look specifically at Wired Magazine
Pauline Borsook's, Cyberselfish (New York: Public Affairs, 2000).
This book enlightened me to the dangers of Wired magazine and clarified some of my own thoughts as a Wired reader.
This past few months I have been reading
Stewart Millar, Melanie. Cracking the Gender Code: Who Rules The Wired World (Toronto, Ont.: Second Story, 1998).
This book builds on the sexist reality of Wired magazine. I have not read the whole book yet but am rereading parts of it with interest.
These are the other gender and technology books I am either reading now or have read in the past year or two:
Consalvo, Mia, & Passonen, Susanna. Women & Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency & Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 2002).
Mostly the articles I read in this book concern web sites that are designed for women or marketted to women. I read about three articles. One article, concerned women as web masters, and pointed out that women tend to be graphic designers of web sites, rather than programers and are paid less in a rather involved case of discrimination in employment.
Cooper, Joel, & Weaver, Kimberlee D. Gender and Computers: Understanding the Digital Divide (London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003).
I am about half way through this empirical study of girl's and boy's uses of computers in schools. The big idea I learned from this is that educational software is designed or has been designed in the past to appeal to boys rather than girls. But the thesis around the digital divide, that high tech jobs are a good thing is questionable these days.
Haraway, Donna. A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s in Haraway, Donna. The Haraway Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004)
This inspired me to create my www.cybercitizen.org web site
Wajcman, Judy. Techno Feminism (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004).
I have read this book which was basically a critical view of other feminist writers of technology including Haraway.
These are the general women's studies books I am reading at present:

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