How STEM Connects with Culture
Presented By Dr. Ted Hall
Abstract
This activity involves designing a story quilt that builds and cultivates your identity as a scientist. Historically, quilt making was a way of knowing for indigenous people who repurposed patches with encoded language and symbolic meanings. Moreover, African American quilt makers repurposed discarded scraps and rags as part of the design process during the Underground Railroad. The quilts served dual purposes in providing warmth and communicating quilt codes as part of oral histories for fellow travelers on the road to freedom. In this way, we see an early historical example of the relationships between community, culture, STEM and liberation.
Culture: The ways communities enact tools, practices, vernaculars and language. Culture is an expression of identity. Culture reflects the art and politics of communities.
Repurposing: The repurposing or the cultural process by which culturally marginalized ethnic groups reclaim artifacts from dominant culture and the environment.
Activities
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Current Realities: Historicizing the dialectical relationship between STEM and culture. The concept of repurposing will frame discussions on STEM and Culture. Participants draw a picture or search for a representation of STEM and culture. Participants upload representations to create a science block on a virtual collaborative whiteboard. The science blocks collectively create a Science Quilt.
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Future: Participants go to breakout rooms to brainstorm what are the barriers and opportunities to achieving the examples. They record their answers in the form below.
Online Exercise
Open the Future in a new tab.