Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Kim Knight’s course materials for Fashioning Circuits bring together the history of fashion and wearable electronics to explore the effects of media on bodies at the intersections of race, gender, class, ability, and sexuality. After doing small-scale projects to introduce students to creating wearables as well as participating in class discussions about intersectionality and media culture, students produce social-justice-oriented wearable projects intended to provide a solution to a problem, make a statement, or create a social intervention. This hands-on experience in critical making is accompanied by discussion of the affordances and limitations of fashion and its relationship with wearable electronics. While other course materials that blend new media with intersectionality tend to emphasize analysis and multimodal writing to assess student outcomes, Fashioning Circuits asks students to perform the critiques they are making by creating digital objects of a different kind—LED safety jackets for dogs, a carbon-monoxide-sensing hat, or an antianxiety bracelet—to demonstrate their understanding of intersectionality and technology. Instructors can incorporate Knight’s course materials, whether prototyping or implementation exercises, to offer students hands-on experiences of social justice innovation
