Syllabus for Roster(s):

  • 17Sp GDS 3020-001 (CGAS)
In the UVaCollab course site:   17Sp GDS 3020-001 (CGAS)

Course Description (for SIS)

The goal for the course is for us to collectively examine the project of development, understand what it does and doesn’t do and get a basic understanding of why. This means examining conceptions of what is “good” for people and how we would know, what the value of intentions are in relation to impact, and how who we are as a person (our subject position) impacts how we understand these things.  This is often personal and uncomfortable work.  Don’t be afraid of having an emotional response to the materials and conversations! Emotional responses identify “structural” things, or assumptions and ideas about how the world works and who we are (or ought to be) in it. Pay attention to your embodied responses, notice when and how they happen, and spend some time thinking about what ideas this material may be challenging. The project of the course is not to resolve these tensions, but rather to help us hold them open productively.

The course is set up around some fundamental questions about how the development project became what we see today, what the goals and functions of development are and who “does” development.