Introductions: Sigrid

Hello, STS Friends:

Apologies for mucking up the beautiful flow of our discussion summaries for tomorrow's class (posted below) with a reminder-intro, but so it goes.  I'm Sigrid Peterson. "Sigrid" is a Scandinavian name taken from Norse mythology.  It reached its global popularity in 1890, took a steep nose-dive shortly after, and has never remotely recovered so you can call me "Sig" if that depresses you too much.  Names you unequivocally cannot call me include those cleverly authored by my family: Siggy, Piggy, Squiggles, Piglet, Squiglet, Sigmund the Sea Monster, Mr. Squigglesworth, and Angrid.  I'm a graduate student in the Department of Geography, work in the subfield of Human Geography, and have (very) broad interests in labor, class, and economic inequality in the United States.  Increasingly, though, I'm interested in the practice of public scholarship, and the politics of knowledge production.  I'm an RA for Daniel, Noah, and Greg's project which informs this seminar, and I'm already looking forward to the range of work that will be produced from this class.  I hope some of you will want to present at our conference next Fall. . .and frankly, I plan to bully you into it.  In the seminar, among other things, I'm hoping to think through how particular rhetorics of development and innovation are mobilized from fields like management studies and urban economic development, and employed in public higher education and the push for interdisciplinarity. . . and in particular places like the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.  "Creativity" is a sticky term I hope to focus on first.  

Other things I love: narrative nonfiction writing; brick oven pizza; Jeff Bridges; bourbon; Scandinavian cinema (it's all so tragic it's hysterical, even the "happy" films will rip your heart out and remind you you're all alone in the world); many different forms of exercise but not in a grating, obsessive, "let-me-post-about-my-10-triathalons-you-lazy-jerks-way" and more of a "I-gotta-do-this-or-many-revolting-things-will-happen-to-my-body-as-I-grow-old-and-it-makes-me-less-sleepy-than-Valium-so-suck-it-up" kind of way.

Other things I hate:  David Brooks.  God, I really hate David Brooks.

Cheers to a great semester!
Sig