Intimacy and Technology

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2008:

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Student Support and Engagement Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Overview, Learning Outcomes, Assessment and Generic Skills sections of this entry.

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. Students who feel their disability may impact on meeting the requirements of this subject are encouraged to discuss this matter with a Faculty Student Adviser and Student Equity and Disability Support: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

Intimate Technologies are those that we use to understand ourselves, and that we use to establish and maintain our relations with others. The subject approaches technologies of intimacy through a wide variety of examples and case studies - technologies of modesty and privacy (underwear and bedrooms), technologies of surveillance (CAT scans and bar-codes), communications technologies (love letters and SMS), reproductive technologies (IVF and sheep-gut), technologies that mediate personal identity (the data-body and flesh-fashion), and that mediate social and community relations (swarms and networks). The unifying themes that run through these examples approach technologies of intimacy in terms of their propensity to abstract, attenuate, individuate and discipline our intimate relations, and students are invited to critically assess this argument. In so doing, students will gain a fresh and critical understanding of the ways in which technologies and our lives are intertwined.

Information Not Available

• form defensible judgements based on a critical evaluation of conflicting arguments;

• develop skills in written and oral communication;

• make appropriate use of primary and secondary sources in mounting an argument;

• conduct independent research.