About

This site is for the A&S Wired Living Learning community’s class, “Between Shadow and Light: Cosmopolitanism in Virtual and Physical Worlds” in Spring 2014. This class uses Second Life, a 3-D virtual world on the web. So, the phrase “between shadow and light” is our way of describing the intersection of physical and virtual worlds, between our “first” and “second” lives, so to speak.

Often we think about our “first” lives as Americans and our “second” lives in which we spend time living and working as adults somewhere else in the world. That’s what happened with the instructors of this course, Richard Greissman and Randolph Hollingsworth.

For two years, shortly after the southern African country of Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, we lived and worked as high school teachers in rural Zimbabwe. We returned to the U.S. with a wealth of experiences . . . and our first-born daughter, who spent her first year of life living among the Shona people of eastern Zimbabwe. Our time in Zimbabwe was defining. We returned in 1984 to the United States to resume our work as educators, this time in a university setting, fully aware that we returned not only as citizens of our birthplace, but as citizens of the world.

The abiding theme of this course is captured in the subtitle of a wonderful book, Cosmopolitanism, by the Princeton University philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah. Professor Appiah has subtitled his book: “Ethics in a World of Strangers.”

Our adult lives will be spent in a world of strangers, some of whom we come to call friends, colleagues, spouse or partner, family and fellow citizens. In this class, we explore the social complexities of a living and working in a world of strangers; and perhaps, this class will help you prepare to make the most of those encounters to come.

Join us today by sharing our posts, adding your comments – and of course, we hope you will join us on the UKy island in Second Life.