Thread by @tressiemcphd

In one of my classes, students wrote discussion guides for their final assignment. They could choose from: Audrey Watters’ “Teaching Machines”; Dan Greene’s “The Promise of Access”; and, Safiya Noble’s “Algorithms of Oppression”. They are very engaged with these texts.

I will use them again in future courses. Questions include: disability access and teaching machines; access doctrine and carceral institutions; and, should librarians give info seekers the answer they want (satisfy need) or the right/correct answer?

In my other course, almost all of the students wrote final reflection papers on Victor Ray’s racialized orgs or Greene’s access doctrine. These frameworks really captured their imagination. I suspect both theories/frameworks will dominate new work.

Each gets at meso/org contexts in a way that is very of the moment for new scholars.

They mayyybe only came about 1/2 with me on racial capitalism though. lol That’s fine. It’s probably my weirdo ish to muddle through. I’m only halfway there myself. This seems fair.

There’s really nothing like Greene’s framework in library/internet studies specifically. It is very needed. In some ways he comes at the same issue that Victor untangles with racialized orgs. They sort of meet in the middle but by different routes.

I tell you what, we started really getting after it in that course when we got into the politics that Elsevier drama is built on and also introduces.

I owe Dan and Audrey a ton for letting us read early copies of their new books. Without them it would have just been me on zoom talking about Murder She Wrote for three hours.

Oh one last thing! Many students are drawing out how Ettarh’s “vocational awe” is linked to racialized org theory. This is specific to library science but need not be. It’s also about professions/orgs and cultural sociology. (It’s basically Weber.)