2019 Online Schedule

In order to prepare for your field work at DFMI, we have collected some readings for all participants to discuss online during the week of July 1. These readings will provide some conceptual and terminological common ground when it comes to method.

There will be a daily discussion forum for commentary on each group of readings, which DFMI staffers will be facilitating. You can see the readings at once, or you can browse by day by clicking the date below.

In addition to the discussion forums, you will have the opportunity to comment more granularly on each of the readings via Hypothes.is, an online social annotation plug–in. (Please sign up for a Hypothes.is account). We encourage you to annotate and comment on specific sections of the texts, which we can then bring that collaborative knowledge to the discussion forums for each day. For example, you can highlight pertinent passages on any of the PDFs below in our closed DFMI group, which you can later elaborate on in the discussion forums.

Monday, July 1, 2019: Method Matters

Key Readings
These selections introduce the need for new methods and begin to orient ourselves towards method- as-invention.
Springgay, Stephanie and Truman, Sarah E. “On the Need for Methods Beyond Proceduralism: Speculative Middles, (In)Tensions, and Response-Ability in Research.”
Pezzullo, Phaedra C., and Catalina M. de Onís. “Rethinking rhetorical field methods on a precarious planet.”
Pink, Sarah. “Principles for sensory ethnography.”
Recommended Media
July 1 Discussion Forum

Tuesday, July 2, 2019: Non-Representational Methods

Key Readings
Readings in this unit focus on more-than-representation tactics. That is, if methods fail to reproduce and cannot represent, then perhaps another aim is possible.
Vannini, Phillip. “Non-representational Research Methodologies: an introduction.”
McCormack, Derek P. “Devices for Doing Atmospheric Things.”
Manning, Erin. “Against Method”
Recommended Media
July 2 Discussion Forum

Wednesday, July 3, 2019: Ethics and/as Sense-Abilities

Key Readings
This section will discuss the intersections and tensions between inventive methods and ethics, arguing in part that our methods can be for-a-world as much as about-a-world.
Pink, Sarah. “Ethics in an Uncertain World: Between Theory and Practice.”
Thrift, Nigel. “Practising Ethics.”
TallBear, Kim. “‘Why Interspecies Thinking Needs Indigenous Standpoints’, Theorizing the Contemporary.”
Mattern, Shannon. “Cloud and Field.”
Recommended Media
July 3 Discussion Forum

Thursday, July 4, 2019: Fielding Methods

Key Readings
This slate of readings interrogates what we might call a “field” as it also tries to open ourselves to a more broadly construed “sense.”
Hawhee, Debra. “Rhetoric’s Sensorium.”
Massey, Doreen. “Imagining the Field.”
Senda-Cook, Samantha, Michael K. Middleton, and Danielle Endres. “Interrogating the Field.”
Blichfeldt, Malthe Emil et al. “The Living Tree: Using Surface Transducers to Explore the Secret Life of Trees through Sonic Interactions.”
Recommended Media
July 4 Discussion Forum

Friday, July 5, 2019: Sensing Methods in Practice I

Key Readings
These readings help us to think about how we might go about putting methods and sense into practice.
Hartigan Jr., John. “How to Interview a Plant.”
Myers, Natasha. “Ungrid-able ecologies: decolonizing the ecological sensorium in a 10,000 year-old natural cultural happening.”
Pink, Sarah. “Preparing for Sensory Ethnography.”
Recommended Media
July 5 Discussion Forum