Faculty

Carole Farber
Associate Professor

North Campus Building Room 455 Phone: 519-661-2111 x88477 University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7 Fax: 519-661-3506 Email: pcecmf@uwo.ca

Teaching
Over the past few years, I have taught a number of courses that explore the theories and practices of computer-mediated communication, online cultures and communities, cyberfeminism and learning technologies. Within the MLIS program I have taught cyberfeminism and issues in distance learning for academic and public libraries. In the undergraduate program I have taught MIT 244E, MIT 209F, MIT333F and MIT204F (see MIT Program for descriptions). I have supervised a number of independent studies and undergraduate research projects on topics ranging from Cyberchrist, Internet Hoaxes, 3d Virtual Reality and Cyberfeminism to Horror Film/Pornographic Film convergence. Within the MLIS program I have supervised a number of independent study courses ranging from Prison Library services, Electronic learning, and Cultural Studies to Ranganathan’s reception in different library science traditions. I have recently examined Ph.D. dissertations on North American Asian Women Writers, A Literary Analysis of Development Discourse, and Social Cognition in Metaphorized Computer-mediated Communication.

This fall I will be supervising projects on the Gendered Construction of Hate Styles on the Internet, The Body as Text, Intermediality and the Representation of Fashion.

Facilitating student learning, from a learner-centred approach, is crucial to my construction of courses of study. Whenever it is possible to do so, my research interests, teaching and student mentoring are woven into one fabric.

Research Interests
My disciplinary background is anthropology, my interdisciplinary background is in women’s studies and feminist theory, as well as critical theory, and my area commitments are research in India and in Canada. Currently my research is in three broad areas: 1) an ethnographic approach to software companies and the 3d virtual reality industries; 2) the pedagogical effectiveness of 3d immersion learning environments (building them, learning through them and learning from them); and 3) museum/cultural industries. I am currently working with people and products from CYBERWORLD International Corporation of Mississauga, Ontario, in these research areas, and exploring them from a range of theoretical perspectives (performance theory, cultural and critical theory, and various “post” theoretical articulations). In addition, I am working with other software companies engaged making applications for computer-mediated communication. I have been and continue to be committed to cross-cultural understanding between India and Canada and engage in research there as often as possible: from travelling theatre in Bengal to the inclusion of a Bengali software company within my 3d Virtual Reality research. I was very recently engaged in a long-term study of Local knowledge and perceptions of the Environment in the Central Himalaya (Kumaon).

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