Dates and texts
| Date | Text | Pages |
|---|---|---|
| 23 Oct 2026 | Introduction to the texts | — |
| 30 Oct 2026 | Ruben Pater, The Politics of Design — chapter "Information Graphics" | 152–188 |
| 13 Nov 2026 | Johanna Drucker, Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display | full essay |
| 27 Nov 2026 | Geoffrey Bowker & Susan Leigh Star, To Classify Is Human — introduction to Sorting Things Out | 1–32 |
| 11 Dec 2026 | Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges | full essay |
| 22 Jan 2027 | Peter A. Hall & Patricio Dávila, Critical Visualization — introduction | 9–28 |
You will find the PDFs in the course's Element chat. Haraway is available in English and in German translation.
Preparation
For each session, work through the assigned reading using the following three questions. Bring at least five concrete passages: page number, a short quotation and your own thoughts.
What convinces you?
Which passages strike you as particularly good, stimulating or surprising? What makes you think?
What stays unclear?
Which terms, arguments or passages do you not understand, or find hard to follow?
Where do you disagree?
Where do you think differently from the text? Where would you argue back?
How a session runs
One person takes on the introduction for each session. We assign these on 23 October.
| 10 min | Introduction. Who is writing here, when, in what context, against whom? |
| 15 min | Collecting the confusions. We gather what nobody understood — without solving it yet. |
| 45 min | What convinced you. Going round, along your marked passages. |
| 15 min | One paragraph closely. We take a single paragraph and look at how it is built. |
| Break | |
| 45 min | Where you disagree. |
| 20 min | Back to the confusions. What has cleared up along the way, what remains open? |
| 15 min | And for your projects? |
Combining this with the other courses
The Reading Club is one of six blocks from which you put your semester together. How that works is described under structure.
