digital democracy + new media activism: a collaboration between the university of san francisco and appalachian state university

upon learning that we'll be teaching similar classes this fall, martha mccaughey and i decided to somehow, someway link our courses. martha, a professor of interdisciplinary studies and director of women's studies at appalachian state university, will be teaching "new media activism"; i'll be teaching "digital democracy."

we haven't worked out all the details yet, but we've agreed that we want our students to interact with and learn from each other through various forms of digital media. also, we agreed to assign a few common readings so that our students can draw from shared material. students in both courses will read (in addition to other readings):

• T.V. Reed, The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle (University of Minnesota Press, 2005)
  
• Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006)

i'm thrilled to collaborate with martha. i first met martha when she was teaching women's studies and sociology at virginia tech, in blacksburg, virginia, and we've been friends and colleagues ever since. plus, together with michael ayers, martha edited cyberactivism: online activism in theory and practice, one of the first and certainly one of the best anthologies on the topic. (incidentally, it was through cyberactivism that i first discovered the work of dorothy kidd, the chair of media studies at USF, and joshua gamson, a professor of sociology at USF.) i am excited to collaborate with martha and even more excited to see what our students create.

hopefully martha and i can use this space to develop our ideas for collaboration.