CS 640N

Whether in the form of Fitbits, Oura rings, Apple and Garmin watches, or their many companion apps, we are increasingly encouraged to track more and more of our daily lives. With the recent rise of sleep tracking, self-tracking has become a 24/7 practice. But to what end? What does it mean and what is at stake in quantifying health and fitness? How do our practices of self-tracking intersect with our lived, embodied experiences? Who has access to our self-tracked data and to what ends? What, if anything, is new about contemporary self-tracking practices? And, most simply, why do we self-track? To examine these and other questions we will address historical and contemporary practices of self-tracking from weight scales and height tables to wearables and smart watches. We will address the socio-cultural aspects of self-tracking as tied to larger conceptions of fitness, wellness and health. The class takes an experiential learning approach, meaning we will perform and critique our own self-tracking practice and bring this into conversation with the scholarly literature on the topic.