Professor Richard Rath

CIS 720 Seminar – “The joys and pitfalls of non-hierarchical organizing”

Please join us on Monday March 9, 4:30-5:30 (Hamilton Library 3F) for a talk by Dr. Richard Rath — Associate Professor Richard Rath from the Department of Ethnic Studies.

Title: “The joys and pitfalls of non-hierarchical organizing” 

Abstract: o
ne semi-mythical ethos of hacker/programmer culture is the idea of a sort of fellowship of coders with no hierarchy to distinguish them beyond each one’s coding skills, a sort of libertarian individualist utopia.  Like any utopia, the devil is in the details, but a number of corporations have tried to implement this approach in their corporate culture, the most formidable of them being Valve, the creators of numerous best-selling games and the Steam gaming platform.  They even have an employee manual that lays out how to work in a non-hierarchical business culture.
 
Bio:
Dr. Richard Rath, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies – focusing on Sound Studies, Digital Media, Early America/Atlantic World, Racialization and Ethnicity, Creolization. 

She is the author of How Early America Sounded and  she is finishing a new book on the history of hearing from the Big Bang to the present. Her recent work includes the proposed field of ethnodigital sonics, the social history of noise and silence, and the sonic dimensions of wampum use. Collaborative digital work includes a database of references to music in early American newspapers and a hypermedia edition of W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. She is also an experimental musician and soundscape artist whose work has featured in international venues.