The Graduate Super-Seminar
In this three-hour team-taught Graduate Super-Seminar we invite students to engage in trans-hemispheric conversations that are not mediated by, or wired through, a western referent. The goal is to produce knowledge at the intersection that shapes sustainable, equitable, and humane presents and futures. The conversations abolish hierarchies of knowing, and open up a parliament of knowledge where every society is capable of, indeed invents and orders, know-how.
Why a super-seminar?
We call it a super-seminar for four reasons. First, it draws its distinguished cast of instructors from across all branches of academic (engineering, arts, humanities, and the sciences) and non-academic (everyday, industry, government, non-profit) fields of knowing and doing. Second, it places historically marginalized cosmologies and epistemologies at the center of addressing the challenges to our world and planet. Third, it goes well beyond simply learning to know, diagnosing problems, or good theory and critique, towards trans-hemispheric knowing in the service of creating sustainable and equitable presents and futures. Finally, the course leverages Zoom to link globally dispersed students and faculty for purposes of learning from and with each other in real-time. In particular, this is a partnership between Global South faculty now concentrated in prominent, western, and historically white universities and their colleagues based in the Global South to reverse the brain drain. There is no valid reason why countries that borrowed money from Western countries, the IMF and World Bank to fund free education for citizens that are now leading academics in the West to be denied access to such skills because of distance. This seminar’s super-ness lies in removing the excuse to contribute and to engage trans-hemispherically.
Aims | Objectives | Goals
The course seeks to explore how different societies make sense of and develop a knowledge of the physical and animate world, and what it means to be human(e) within it. In that sense, it opens up trans-hemispheric conversations between cosmologies (ways of being, seeing, ordering, and making worlds) and epistemologies (ways of knowing, producing and ordering knowledge). The goal is to figure out what place this knowledge has in contriving and making presents and futures, wherein every culture recognizes itself and its contribution, and feels worthy among others.
Two-track format
The Super-Seminar is composed of two tracks, each with its own eligibility criteria:
The Residential Super-Seminar | The class is open only to students taking this course with a faculty member co-teaching in this initiative. Students can register for full credit at their institution. The course mechanics are described in detail in the next section.
The Super-Summer School | The class is conducted at one or multiple sites over July-August every year, typically vacation in most academic calendars. It will be a specially curated event over 2-3 weeks, capped by a design-makerx wherein students apply what they have learned to address a problem or create. All students are expected to pay the full tuition, transport, food, and accommodation expenses in advance. The format will be announced when the call for applications goes out end of December 2021 or January 2022.
Course mechanics
Students at multiple participating centers will take one harmonized curriculum but will register, attend class at/through, and be certified by their university. We will deploy Zoom, smartphones, and other digital tools to facilitate a trans-scalar dialogue (micro and macro, local and global), specifically bringing our various physical locations into class via live-streaming or podcasting and vlogging. The teaching and learning methods are broken down into pre-class, in-class, and post-class activities. The assessment model is a continuous or formative one focused on mastery and application of knowledge rather than just theory.
SUPER SEMINAR DATES
The Graduate Super-Seminar
Sept 15-Dec 15 (Fall Semester), 2022
Venue (multiple, linked via Zoom