dSHARP Gerrymandering Series: Teaching the Cultural Ramifications of Gerrymandering through John Oliver, Video Games, and Political Cartoons

What choices go into making a gerrymandered map?
Do you think you could make better choices and a better map?
Do you want to learn how?

If you are interested in discussing gerrymandering and its effects, as well as learning new technical skills (ex. finding data or network analysis), join us for the Libraries dSHARP Gerrymandering Series!

The process of gerrymandering, manipulating voting district boundaries to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group, often leads to rippling cultural effects on the communities in which the redistricting efforts are meant to exploit. Using a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment focusing on gerrymandering, a redistricting video game, and political cartoons, I will describe a pedagogy for engaging an audience on the cultural impacts of gerrymandering, teaching how these redistricting processes may be aimed at disadvantaging only a certain population, but ultimately affect all of us.

Lecture attendees may wish to bring a laptop to play along with the redistricting video game, but bringing a laptop is not required.