New Course in Ethnic Studies:

Race, Colonialism and Data

Spring 2024

Ethnic Studies (ETHNSTD) 5194

Schedule Class Number: 37200 (UG) or 37199 (G)

Tues/Thurs 12:45 - 2:05 pm

Location: 180 Cunz Hall

This interdisciplinary course envisions the possibility of a responsible data science by studying the colonial and capitalist legacies of data analytics and its methodologies. What makes data science global? How is data pervasive?

Explore the how and the why of the injustices enabled by data and AI and the infrastructures and human relations that sustain data science. Drawing on science and technology studies, geography, political science, anthropology and the history of science, we’ll study how data is used in education, land, geology, finance and health. It opens up narratives, histories, contexts and possibilities of a different kind of data.  

Students of diverse backgrounds will read, engage with the readings and be in dialogue with their peers, and work on hands-on activities that will help them think critically about data practices. Regardless of our aspirations, we live in a world that is increasingly mediated by algorithmic, big data and associated technologies. “Race, Colonialism, and Data” offers students the opportunity to think critically about this complex reality and reflect on how to dismantle unjust data practices to imagine and organize better and livable futures.

The course will be taught by Dr. Harshavardhan Bhat, postdoctoral fellow at the Translational Data Analytics Institute and affiliate for the Center for Ethnic Studies. 

For more information on this course, contact Dr. Bhat at bhat.115@osu.edu.