Comments on: Publish This Kit (Part I)

By: Maker Lab in the Humanities » University of Victoria » Kits for Cultural History

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 18:45:49 +0000

[…] exploratory engagements that playfully resist technological instrumentalism. In so doing, they prompt audiences to consider how the material particulars of historical mechanisms are, or were, embedded in […]

By: Maker Lab in the Humanities » University of Victoria » The Kits for Cultural History at HASTAC 2014

Fri, 05 Sep 2014 18:43:31 +0000

[…] Shaun Macpherson and I described in our earlier blog posts, “Publish This Kit” Part I and Part II, the kits afford a form of tacit engagement that encourages audiences to reassemble […]

By: Maker Lab in the Humanities » University of Victoria » Making as Scholarship

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 16:02:10 +0000

[…] fosters a distinct and recognizable form of knowledge. Returning for a second to what both Nina and Shaun suggest, how do we better understand the affordances or scholarly benefits of […]

By: Maker Lab in the Humanities » University of Victoria » Debuting Our Early Wearables Kit

Tue, 20 May 2014 17:28:06 +0000

[…] presented a poster on the lab’s “Kits for Cultural History” project. As I argue elsewhere, we consider the hands-on engagement inherent to the kits an important way to make scholarly […]

By: Maker Lab in the Humanities » University of Victoria » Publish This Kit (Part II)

Tue, 20 May 2014 17:09:35 +0000

[…] Nina’s post on the modes of persuasion and procedural rhetoric afforded by a “kits” approach to […]

By: Maker Lab in the Humanities » University of Victoria » Packaging Design and Material History

Tue, 20 May 2014 17:05:26 +0000

[…] working on the design for both our “Tennis for Two” and “Early Wearables” kits, several of us in the lab have been considering how the material composition of a kit can (or […]

By: Jentery Sayers

Jentery Sayers — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 00:24:00 +0000

Thanks, Nancy!

By: Nancy Chick

Nancy Chick — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 23:16:00 +0000

Thanks to Chuck, I’m going to adapt this kit project to my women in popular culture class this spring! At our Center for Teaching (Vanderbilt), our theme this year is Students as Producers, so this will fit in perfectly! We’re ending the year with a campus-wide Celebration of Learning (exhibition of students’ “productions”) and bringing Randy Bass to keynote. I’m eager to see if any of my students might submit a kit! Thanks for the inspiration!

By: Chuck Rybak

Chuck Rybak — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 23:44:00 +0000

Thanks so much for responding, Jentery. This really does help a lot. The other day I was talking with a colleague in history who is also very interested in pursuing a kit project (I directed him to this post), and what you’ve written here helps tremendously with conceiving an assignment sheet and syllabi. Basically, we’re both going to give a “kit project” a go, with “learning from failure” as our fallback mantra. The frequent documentation of progress will be incredibly important to the project and you’ve reinforced that here in a way that helps me balance written components with the actual making. And what I hear you saying at the end is that it’s more reasonable to expect an early prototype for a kit (when working within the confines of a single class) and to rely much more on the thought, reasoning, arguments, etc, that have brought the kit to that stage, rather than expecting a finished, dazzling product. Basically, use this as a project that makes room for the work still in progress, plans for the future, etc.

Thanks again for responding! What you folks do here is so interesting and embraces interdisciplinarity in a way I’d like to emulate.

By: Jentery Sayers

Jentery Sayers — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 22:36:00 +0000

Great question, Chuck. I could certainly imagine kits being built as part of a course (especially courses anchored in the histories of technologies and media). I'm doing something similar next semester, with my "Things To Think With" course on 3D modelling and fabrication (DHUM 250 at UVic). I'll publish the syllabus for that course in December or so. But, generally speaking, I think the trick is making sure students routinely document and share what they are doing, including what issues and surprises they are encountering. For people in the humanities, it might also mean cutting back just a bit on assigned reading as well as reducing lecture time (to make room for in-class experimentation and workshops). To boot, you would probably need to underscore the alpha or beta state of their prototyping work, if only to highlight the fact that, in a single semester / quarter, a polished kit would be difficult to achieve. Know what I mean? I hope this response helps! Please let us know what other questions or concerns you have.