In the Loop: Marie Hicks

Mapping Bathrooms, Making Movies: Modeling the Humanities' Utility While Teaching at a Technical School

Teaching humanities to engineers at a technical university presents challenges and requires a rethinking of traditional pedagogical techniques. This talk looks at some methods for how to approach hard-to-reach audiences and how to inculcate humanities skills and knowledge in students more interested in the technical. By looking at several learning case studies of applied humanities, this talk will show how the humanities can be positioned as a useful public good rather than as an abstract academic topic.

About Marie

Marie Hicks is an assistant professor of history in the Department of Humanities at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is a historian of technology, gender, and modern Europe (focusing on Britain). She focuses on the history of computing and is interested in how the humanities can be marshaled to change sociotechnical infrastructure.

Marie will speak as part of "In the Loop", a lecture series on design, innovation and entrepreneurship organized by IIT Institute of Design faculty. The series engages a wide range of speakers that present on topics ranging from theoretical research and emerging methodologies that are relevant to the field of design as well as personal narratives and examples from current design practice.