Author: Mary Kate McGowan

In the spring of 2025, I started working on a project with Yixi Gao ’28 and Lenox Balzebre ’28; it’s called “Complex Problems, Complex Solutions.” Yixi and Lenox worked on a preproduction plan for the first episode of a multi-media online magazine that aims to showcase the indispensability of having a wide range of disciplinary perspectives when approaching complex social problems. 

It all started when Yixi and Lenox came to my office hours to inquire about starting an undergraduate philosophy journal. Appreciating their enthusiasm and skills and excited about the TSSL project, I suggested that we do something showing how important the humanities are. We discussed how today’s pressing social problems, like climate change and political polarization, cannot be adequately understood without insights from across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. In short, we need all disciplinary hands on deck if we are to have any chance of making substantial progress on these sorts of problems.  We talked about the possibility of a multi-media online magazine, each episode of which would focus on a different problem. Each episode would also have multiple nodules, each from different disciplinary perspectives and each conveying information through distinct tools. The magazine would have podcasts, film, interactive websites, 3-d representations of art installations, maps, building plans, quizzes, blogs, interactive timelines, and so on. 

First, Yixi and Lenox looked at faculty research pages to see if there was a single topic that many faculty here were already working on. This part of their project was fascinating; it turns out that there are many connections between our individual research programs but we don’t realize it. Next, Yixi and Lenox decided to focus on surveillance. This was exciting too since surveillance was not one of the topics we discussed in our original conversation.  Yixi and Lenox worked through the summer (on my research funds) and into the fall. We now have a detailed preproduction plan for episode one on surveillance. The plan for this episode involves a mini-series with an interactive map of the Lulu (with snippets of video that explain various aspects of the building design), an interactive website highlighting the work of Wellesley’s Laboratory on Ethics and Equity on Digital Technology (which explores issues at the intersection of philosophy and computer science), a podcast with several members of the sociology department discussing with each other how their various research programs concern surveillance, and an art installation exploring shareveillance (with a documentary covering both its installation and its impact). The website will also have a component where users can add their questions and reactions to its content. I really enjoyed working on this project and sure hope that we find a way to make this online magazine happen. It would be a great way to showcase the importance of the humanities.