Taught By:
Atyeh Ashtari
City and Regional Planning
University of Memphis
Read profile here.
Motivation to Teach Social Action:
Course Description:
One of the primary requirements of planning education is to prepare students to understand and address multiple dimensions of social inequalities based on class, race, gender, age, religion etc. as they relate to urban realities. Toward that end, storytelling can play a central role in planning education and practice by democratizing knowledge, sharpening critical judgement, and expanding our practical tools. But the stories we tell are not innocent. How we frame our stories determines what we place at the center and what we place at the margin, and yet more what is left out. How we communicate our stories also determines who we reach and connect with and who we leave out or further alienate by intimidation. Stories have power and how we tell them are intimately connected to what message we want to convey and who we want to reach. Text is only one medium toward such goal, but academia by in large has driven on textual communication, which is more biased towards privileged groups. This course, by exploring other mediums of communication, seeks to move beyond the hegemony of textual communication and introduce means that might further democratize both production and dissemination of knowledge. In this course we offer a range of digital communication tools that are critical to inclusive planning and education.
