Justine Cassell

		With respect to girls, I recently co-edited a volume on gender and computer games with Henry Jenkins, published with MIT Press (1998), and entitled From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (also available from Amazon.com). Henry Jenkins and I invited contributions from researchers in education, psychology, cultural theory and technology, along with the foremost players in the industry of computer games for girls, on the topic of implications of the "girls' market" in computer games. My own chapter in the book argues that designing games specially for girls risks ghettoizing girls as a population that needs 'special help' in their relation to technology. Instead, I describe my own design work which has contributed games for both boys and girls that encourage them to express aspects of self-identity that transcend stereotyped gender categories. With respect to women in science, I am carrying out a large-scale life-history project on women linguists. As a former member of COSWL -- the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics -- and the co-chair of a sub-committee, I have collected narratives of the lives of women linguists. The goal of this project is to get a sense of what constitutes a "normal" career path in Linguistics for women; the project is allied with COSWL's effort to collect questionnaire data on men and women in Linguistics. If you are a woman in Linguistics and would like to tell your story, please contact me at the e-mail address given below. In the context of a National Science Foundation Visiting Professorship for Women at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1994-1995, I designed and coordinated a series of workshops on survival skills for women in academia. I coordinated a similar series of workshops at the 1995 LSA Summer Institute in Linguistics, in Albuquerque New Mexico, and the 1997 LSA Summer Institute in Linguistics, in Ithaca New York. I've included a link to the bibliography for the survival skills workshops, and some other information about resources for women in science.
		welcome people research courses @ctivism publications press
		Justine Cassell MIT Media Laboratory E15-315 20 Ames Street Cambridge MA 617.253.4899 617.258.6264 [fax] justine@media.mit.edu


		Technology for Empowerment and Voice One of the principal concerns that emerges in contemplation of technological 'progress' is that those whose stories have not been heard (girls, developing nations, under-represented populations of all sorts) risk being even less often heard as technological advances privilege the voices of those with access to technology. From my vantage point at MIT, the home of many of those technological advances, I have become interested in how we can use technology to empower and give voice to children in developing nations, to girls, and to women in science. With respect to that first population, I directed Junior Summit 1998, an opportunity to empower and give voice to the world's children through digital technology. This international project brought together 3000 children from 139 countries in a 6 month on-line forum that allowed children to communicate with each other across languages on topics of international concern. The forum culminated in a 6-day program at MIT (November, 1998) where 100 of the children met with world leaders. The technology and design of the program focused on bringing voices to the table that are not often heard, to help children reach beyond clichés to the areas in which they can make the most valuable contributions, and potentially increase their role on the world stage afterwards.