Authors: John Monberg, MSU Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures

Summary

Drawing on lessons learned from working with partners in award-winning Smart City projects in Columbus, Kansas City, Portland, Denver, and Chicago, Dr. Monberg’s work is focused on helping to build a civil society infrastructure scaled to meet the needs of the callings and opportunities created by Smart City technology infrastructures.

Working with local city managers in Lansing, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, and Kalamazoo, this project will lead to the creation of a usable humanities framework for leaders grappling with the consequences of new Smart City initiatives by drawing upon sophisticated humanities perspectives to create a coherent vision that builds on the collaboration of many community stakeholders, identify techniques for genuine community outreach and engagement, and formulate ethical principles around issues of equity, participation, representation, and deliberation.

Author Information

John Monberg, MSU Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures

I am an academic specialist in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures and a core faculty member of the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. My work focuses on the new media resources and information infrastructures needed for community deliberation adequate to meet the challenges of globalization. Since these infrastructures are designed, my work pays special attention to the productive practices that mediate culture, technology, and public. My work seeks to deepen this understanding by drawing upon a shared department culture that understands the complex relationships between writing and infrastructure, and the work of writing in variety of social contexts, institutional arrangements, and genres.

Since I’ve joined MSU, my work resonates strongly with the mission of a public, research-intensive, land-grant university, and that has an especially strong resonance with the themes of the College of Arts and Letters: global awareness, creativity, and innovation in a global economy, and inclusive, diverse democracy. In my specific intellectual and intellectual context, there is a strong, mutually supportive relationship among research, teaching, and service for which I was awarded the College of Arts and Letters Faculty Award for Innovation and Leadership in Teaching and Learning in recognition of innovative teaching and overall excellence in 2014. I was also recognized as an exceptional researcher by the Association of Internet Researchers in 2008.

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