ANT495/595 Data, Power, and Persuasion
Dr. John Millhauser (millhauser@ncsu.edu)
Fall 2024, M/W 11:45 to 1:00
This course investigates the uses and abuses of data and is inspired by current critical approaches to data science, including the study of data racism and algorithmic bias. Think of it like a bootcamp for taking a critical view of the data produced and presented by social scientists (including us) to better develop our own projects and arguments. We’ll work with texts and topics current and historical, including Data Feminism (2020), Race After Technology (2019), Seeing Like a State (1999), and Silencing the Past (1995) among others.
In addition to the critique of data, the course will cover basics of data creation and management, conducting and arguing from statistical analyses, and best practices when presenting findings. We’ll have periodic workshops on Excel, data hygiene, database design, metadata, descriptive statistics, basic statistical analyses, the logic of argument, and graphic presentation. Whatever kind of data you’re working with, we’ll work it into our coverage.
Although I am trained as an archaeologist and I work primarily with material and documentary evidence of past behaviors, the course will cover any and all kinds of data – quantitative and qualitative, historic and contemporary, observational and experimental, etc… If social scientists use it to prove a point, then it is a subject we can cover.
There are no prerequisites for this course and it is open to students in any major.