I found really good instructions on how to use the top spindle from youtube and finally got the hang of it. Of course I dont look very expert - but the job gets done.

Am currently using twisted.etsy.com ’s rodney colorway roving that I got way back in spring of 2008 and am practicing handspun yarn. Its very “artsy”:)

will post pictures of the unevenly wound first attempts once I crochet it into something.

My mother will be ever so amused when I tell her I can finally use a spindle (she is quite the expert [at least in my eyes] - even now when she can barely see, her fingers are nimble - - spinner of khadi cotton yarn on her ancient charkha used when she and my father moved with Gandhi followers way back when…).

So now I am at ICA - up at 4 am thinking of how to frame the loom.

I guess I used it to “rupture” the idea of “virtual” “global” and “technology”  in my precon presentation and my OU presentation - but now I have to put forth what S and Sh have articulated with me and once again make pleas to rearticulate the notion of global…

is there a point to trying? Is this the audience that will be receptive to these ideas - always the same questions, eh:)

oh well - it must be presented and then we shall see.

meanwhile - the book signing for the South Asian Technospaces is today.

In other news - unrelated to ICA and more about the technologists and professionals in my family who are simultaneously globetrotting this week to things like Brain conferences and what not in the Montreal neighborhood….

M gets here in the afternoon - maybe I will get to see him for lunch. S gets here at night - so no sleep for me. But I get a head start on my Hyderabad trip.

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PLEASE SUBMIT ABSTRACTS ASAP  (deadline is still tentative - so if you are working on something relevant email me anyway with a query).  Title: Everyday 3D Lives: Digital Embodiment, Performativity and GlobalizationEditor : Radhika Gajjala[ http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik ](Lexington Press is interested and I am discussing this collection with them)  In the recent past, there has been much talk of “web 2.0 “ and “web 3D” as new media. Educators and researchers all over the world are debating the pros and cons of such environments. MMORPGs (Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and online 3D environments for social and economic activity. Immersive environments such as secondlife are being examined from multiple disciplinary lenses. This edited will include articles based in examinations of embodiment, performativity, gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality and globalization critically, and will be open to multiple disciplinary intersections.What sorts of convergences, conjunctures and connections emerge in relation to embodiment, identity and globalization specifically in 3D environment (such as secondlife) and MMORPGs? Researchers examining presence and absence or voice and voicelessness are increasingly mobilized to speak of identities emerging online, while binaries such as embodied/disembodied and global/local are deployed unproblematically in both utopian and dystopian viewpoints regarding the Internet. Performativity begins to shape exposure and privacy. Thus while claims are being made that the Internet is a “public sphere” in a Habermasian sense (Poster 1995) corporate privation and surveillance comes upon us in Internet mediated environments and we learn to negotiate our speaking within interstices of presences and absences, cooperation and isolation, community engagement and individual consumerism. Simultaneously hegemonic structures invested in particular ideologies of globalization and “free” markets learn to co-opt diverse identities and voices. Voice thus becomes a strategic construct in both cases. Notions of voice/voiceless and empowerment/participation in such instances are appropriated by status quo discourses and are themselves mobilized for the oppression of the subaltern (Gajjala, forthcoming 2008).In the book on “Pedagogies of the Global”, the editor, Arif Dirlik writes that”Rather than erase difference by converting all to Euro/American norms of modernity, however, capitalist modernity, as it has gone global, has empowered societies once theoretically condemned to premodernity or tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very traditions, as filtered through experiences of colonialism, neocolonialism, or simple marginalization by the forces of globalization “(Dirlik, 2006, 3).Digital media plays a significant role in aiding these connections and shaping these re-presentations. I am interested in research that examines these connections, representations and productions through critical theoretical lenses based in postcolonial theories, feminist theories, critical race theories and so on.500 word abstracts due by January 1, 2008 and full articles of no more than 8000 words length due by September 2008.Email me with any queries (Deadlines are still flexible at this time - so keep checking) - radhika@cyberdiva.org.

IRL - Anthony Fontana, Linda Mandelbaum and Radhika Gajjala

Who took Pedagogy out and put Technology in to replace it?

There is a very interesting discussion going on on the AIR-L list that I am trying not to get drawn into replying to posts on. Too much stuff to do here with Grad step week and all (and last week the Digital Mirror and New Faculty presentation as well as prep for Grad step week took up most of my time).

This post is mostly a public note to myself (yes Public - if it is on a blog it is public and however stupid my public comment may have been or is - yes it can be traced back to my “real” self - even if I use a psuedonym - it can… how many times do we rehearse these arguments on lists anyway?)

Performativity and everyday negotiation of online existence as a not so “new” thing is a point (among others) that gets missed in some discussions of “privacy” and the internet as “public space” arguments - but more later. Just as digital literacy and digital divide discourses are still stuck in early generations of Internet user paradigms even as they use buzz words such as “web 2.0″

Nuances are so easily disappeared in the focus on static in looking at online existence/texts as if (implicitly) they were either just speech on the one hand or written text (as defined by print paradigms) on the other while viewing online engagement as unproblematically “disembodied”…

more later

to find out more about what it means to “quilt conceptually” according to rad Zabibha (born in 2006) and Cyb Tabla (born in 2004)

go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brouwer/172/149/42

work in-progress - always

considering also linking to Diva’s earlier moo projects - at least those that are still accessible

SLumming » community, discussion and building for dialogue on SL

Sample image of an RL Maidaan

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/India/photo701549.htm

The archives aren’t updated yet - but when they do you can find the discussion…

Meanwhile - cutting and pasting a part of my most recent post to invite anyone in-world to IM me to be a part of the group I am forming.

THIS discussion is to me about SL education and how we as educators can use these tools (if we must) responsibly and to explore if this medium is indeed enhancing or hampering our ability to pedagogically negotiate the complexities of representational practices world wide. When are we as educators part of the solution and when do we become part of the problem?

I am starting a group on SL on the politics of representation and pedagogy - anyone interested should IM me inworld - rad Zabibha.

This fall I teach a course on Pedagogy at the grad level and hope to have them participate in an SL based assignment that will include this group and discussions with them. Therefore the group is about more than “SLED” - it is about Pedagogy and representational practices.

Oxford Internet Institute - Civil Society Practitioners Programme

Invitation to apply

The Oxford Internet Institute (University of Oxford) invites applications from the global South to fill two places in its Civil Society Practitioners Programme.

This visitor programme is intended for Civil Society Practitioners of distinction or outstanding promise who wish to visit the Institute for a period of six weeks between February and December 2008, to undertake research concerning the social impact of the Internet and related ICTs. Visitors are expected to reside in Oxford during their stay, and to participate fully in the intellectual life of the Institute. The successful applicants will receive:

* A subsistence allowance of 3800 GBP (7500 USD) to cover research expenses and living costs during their stay in Oxford
* A travel grant of up to 1000 GBP (2000 USD) for travel to and from the UK

Applications will ideally be submitted by Civil Society Practitioners in or from the global South, active in the areas of freedom of expression, media reform, media justice, and communications and information policy in the globalized context of the Internet.

How to apply

For details on how to apply, please download:
Information for Applicants (PDF, 45kb) at http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/CSPP_Application_Information.pdf

You may also request to have this information emailed to you in plain text form. The deadline for completed applications to reach the OII Academic and Student Affairs Officer (by post or email: contact details below) is 26 September 2007. Please note that incomplete applications cannot be considered.

Final notification of an award will occur in November 2007. Successful candidates will be expected to take up their six week residency in Oxford at any time between February and December 2008.

Contact

Laura Taylor
Academic and Student Affairs Officer
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
1 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3JS
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1865 287222
Fax: +44 (0)1865 287211
Email: recruit@oii.ox.ac.uk

This programme has been made possible through funding by the Ford Foundation

This Call for Applications is also available at: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/cspp/