about me

Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training.

—Herbert Simon, “The Science of Design: Creating the Artificial”

I'm a PhD candidate at Michigan Technological University working in Communication and Cultural Studies, examining the relation between culture and technology. My research leverages and is strongly focused by the work I do in information/web and graphic design.

I earned my BA in English and my MA in Rhetoric and Writing from San Diego State University, after which I taught ESL in Brasil briefly. Upon returning to the states I lectured in Rhetoric & Writing (SDSU) for several years. While pursuing my graduate degrees, I've taught a variety of courses in the study of literature, rhetoric and composition, technical communication, web and multimedia design, and flash animation. I've also held various administrative positions, including managing the Humanities Department computer lab, and serving in the Michigan Tech Graduate Student Government as Parliamentarian, Public Relations chair, and finally President. I am currently working on the NSF-sponsored ADVANCE grant, researching the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women in STEM fields at Michigan Tech.

For more information on my experience and qualifications, please see my Curriculum Vitae .

Contact Information

Communication & Cultural Studies
Department of Humanities
Michigan Technological University
1400 Townsend Dr.
Houghton, MI 49931-1295

tel (760) 688-8514
eMail rsharris@mtu.edu

research

We ought to establish the basic sociotechnological principles of control mechanisms as their age dawns, and describe in these terms what is already taking the place of the disciplinary sites of confinement that everyone says are breaking down...The key thing is that we're at the beginning of something new...the widespread progressive introduction of a new system of domination.

—Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations

As a communication scholar working within the tradition of British cultural studies, I examine the deeply co-constitutive relation of culture and technology, especially with regard to what is termed, variously networked- or cyberculture, the information society, or what is broadly understood across multiple disciplines as 'new media'. I use the theory and practice of articulation to map the various assemblages which articulate ICTs (information communication technologies) to ideologies, economies, publics, juridico-political practices, computer protocols and other technologies in our contemporary historical conjuncture.

In mapping these articulations, I employ theorists drawn from a wide range of related fields/approaches, including rhetoric and semiotics, visual culture, actor-network theory, HCI (human-computer interaction), informatics, cybercultural studies, among many others. I value the impulse, central to cultural studies, centered around creating positive social transformation. My experience as a designer (graphic, information, web, multimedia, etc.) powerfully informs my research and teaching in these areas.

The Dissertation

My dissertation, tentatively titled Big Brother Where Art Thou? The Problematic of Privacy in Networked Culture, engages the problematic of privacy, as a 'social crisis of sorts' (Grossberg 2010) which reaches across the social formations of our current global techno-cultural conjunctures, and is centered around new questions, new demands, new technologies and new ideologies concerning capitalism, communication, culture, and technology. I map the changing nature of privacy along the economic, juridico-political, and protocological levels, in order to understand the ways in which the rearticulation of privacy becomes a tool of technocultural hegemony.

teaching

The role of pedagogy is to develop an epistemology of pluralism that provides access without people having to erase or leave behind different subjectivities…we cannot remake the world through schooling, but we can instantiate a vision through pedagogy that creates in microcosm a transformed set of relationships and possibilities for social futures, a vision that is lived in schools.

—The New London Group, Multiliteracies

The courses I teach generally fall under the broad rubrics of design and communication, and focus primarily on urgent social questions, including but not limited to those raised by the emergence of highly technologized forms of social, political, and cultural organization. I leverage a strong background in information, graphic and web design to give students real-world multi-media production experience, where appropriate. Whether I'm teaching argumentative writing or web design, I challenge students to problematize received views of the major problematics of our social formation (e.g., sex/gender, race/ethnicity, class, culture and technology) and to make their course work count in very real ways toward positive social transformation. The courses I've taught at university are listed below. I've also taught ESL in Brasil.

My Curriculum Vitae and my Teaching Philosophy provide more detailed descriptions of my experience.

Michigan Technological University

HU 3642—Introduction to Multimedia Design
HU 3120—Technical Communication
HU 2650—Introduction to Website Design
UN 2001—Revisions: Oral, Written and Visual Communication
Flash Multimedia Design—Michigan Tech Summer Youth Pograms
Graphic Design (asst.)—Michigan Tech Summer Youth Pograms

San Diego State University

RWS 305—Writing in Multiple Contexts
RWS 200—Intermediate Composition
RWS 100—Beginning Composition
RWS 096—Developmental Writing
ENG 220—Introduction to Literature

design

When not researching technoculture, I sometimes teach and frequently work as a graphic, web, and information designer. I provide my clients with a wide range of design solutions, based on a careful assessment of their needs. I practice web standards-compliant, user-centered, iterative design, marrying a keen aesthetic sensibility with the conviction that strong information architecture is at the core of any site's usefulness and findability.

Recent projects have included database design, print adverts, postcards, logos, web-enabled forms, Flash® animations, and both static and dynamic web sites. Recent clients include the Michigan Tech Humanities Department, Graduate Student Government, ADVANCE, and Global City.

Web Work

Print Work

Logos

resources

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul...In any case, always rememeber what Jean-Luc Godard said, "Its not where you take things from, it's where you take them to."

—Jim Jarmusch

Only Connect ...