Interdisciplinary Topics Course (202-0-73)

Topic

Introduction to Infrastructure Studies

Instructors

Rajiv Mishra

Meeting Info

Northwestern Qatar Room 3-203: Mon, Wed 11:30AM - 12:45PM (AST)

Overview of class

This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of infrastructure studies, beginning with basic concepts to understand the broader contextual and embedded understanding of infrastructures. The course will explore the imagination of infrastructures and the centrality of technology in building and creating infrastructures. Students will learn about technological infrastructures such as digital infrastructures, transportation infrastructures, and others. The course will situate infrastructures in historical, political, social, and cultural contexts. Students will learn about governments, nongovernmental organisations, and experts who plan, build, and operate different infrastructures in national, international, and global contexts. The course will also look at the way infrastructures unfold on the ground, and their social and cultural interactions with users/people, as well as the engagement and negotiation people have with different infrastructures in their everyday life, and their experience and understanding of infrastructures. Along with the social and cultural interaction of infrastructures, students will learn about how infrastructures interact with their surrounding environment in which they are built and operated, and the various impacts and implications. The course aims to help students draw a broader critical introductory understanding of infrastructures.

Registration Requirements

Prerequisites: None

First-Year Students, sophomores and ABP Dual Enrolled students

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: NUQ: Seats are reserved for Sophomore and Freshmen only.