Participatory Culture and New Media
This reading group addresses the way the Internet and associated new media, such as blogging, wikis, mashups of digital video, and social networking sites, enable new forms of cultural participation. Discussion of this phenomenon, often referred to as Web 2.0, will appeal to scholars from diverse intellectual traditions, and include themes such as literacy, and copyright in the age of participatory culture; technology affordances and constraints on cultural production; and the place of women's versus men's productions

Organizers: Lisa Nakamura (lnakamur@uiuc.edu) and Lori Kendall (loriken@uiuc.edu)

Science, Technology & Cultural Identity
This group is a forum to read and discuss foundational and emerging scholarship within Science & Technology Studies. Work that considers race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and transnationalism will be emphasized. Cross-disciplinary discussions will illuminate how cultural identity influences and is shaped by science and technology. We will explore the rich and compelling ways human societies produce and use science and technology, and how individuals locate themselves with and among changes in science and technology.

Organizers: Rayvon Fouché ( rfouche@uiuc.edu) and Sharra Vostral (vostral@uiuc.edu)

Critical Technologies of Race
This is an inter- and transdisciplinary group designed to draw connections between texts in critical theory and critical race studies. It is an important time to re-imagine the circulation of racial epistemologies and politics; conversations would be designed to facilitate the re-thinking and re-framing of critical race studies via classic and contemporary readings in critical theory.

Organizer: Fiona Ngô (ngo@uiuc.edu)

Digital Literacies
Organized around the theme of digital literacies, this reading group invites colleagues to engage in an interdisciplinary conversation on how digital media have been taken up in fields such as writing studies, art and design, informatics, communication, and rhetorical studies, among them. With digital literacies, we do not signal only competence in the skills necessary to operate a computer. Instead we argue that the ability to read, compose, and communicate electronically has become essential to literate activity.

Organizers: Gail Hawisher (hawisher@uiuc.edu) and Patrick Berry (pberry2@uiuc.edu)

Medicine / Science
This interdisciplinary reading group focuses on the historical and cultural analysis of human health, medicine, and science. We read history, cultural studies, socilogy, and anthropology and, from time to time, view videos as well. Topics have included AIDS, Japanese-American physicians, thalidomide, condoms, disabilities, and end-of-life care. The core group comes from History, the Institute of Communications Research, and the Medical Scholars Program. We welcome those with related interests in other disciplines.

Organizers: Matt Gambino (mgambino@uiuc.edu) and Leslie J. Reagan (lreagan@uiuc.edu)