Teaching

Invention is never just a technical breakthrough: it's a cultural event, a story about the future, a way of shaping relationships and distributing power. In this section of Inquiry, Conversation, Argument, we'll explore invention as a rhetorical and analytical problem: How do we talk about innovation? Who gets to invent, and who is left out? What kinds of futures do our inventions assume or erase?

This course challenges us to slow down our thinking and write about invention as a site of social complexity. We'll treat familiar objects—like smartphones, biometric sensors, or doorbell cameras—as entry points into systems of meaning, identity, and control. Readings will span science writing, critical design theory, speculative fiction, and cultural critique. We'll develop a sense of how invention is framed across genres and practice using writing like inventors: to test ideas, complicate them, and reimagine them.

We'll strengthen our writing by treating revision as both a tool for inquiry and a crucial aspect of invention. Our goal isn't just clarity, but depth: to build the kind of writing that helps us think harder, argue better, and see more clearly how invention shapes the world we live in—and if there's one we might choose to make instead.