By Felicia Wu Song and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Dr. Felicia Wu Song: Restless Devices

“All of the little habits — these urges to check our phones, to check our platforms — those are shaping us." — Felicia Wu Song

Listen in on an exclusive peek into our fall book club interview as Women Scholars and Professionals book club host Jasmine Obeyesekere conducts an online discussion with author and sociologist Dr. Felicia Wu Song where they discuss digital habits, community, and spiritual formation.

How do you engage with the digital technology in your life? Do you wish for a time when your phone didn't rule your life?

In this finale of our Fall Book Club, we engage in conversation with Felicia Wu Song about her book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age. You'll enjoy this rich conversation even if you weren't able to participate in the book club!

Felicia Wu Song shows us that even though we rightly long for community, we settle for connection instead, and shows us how our souls are being formed by the digital world we inhabit in ways we may not always be conscious of. Dr. Song doesn't give us a list of do's and don'ts primed for failure. Instead she offers suggestions of "counter liturgy" — intentional habits that will help us abide in Christ, rather than abide in the digital.

Felicia Song is Associate Professor and Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. 

— Jasmine Obeyesekere

 

You can listen on iTunes or at The Women Scholars and Professionals Podcast. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

Links mentioned in this interview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Kristin Hardwick on StockSnap

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About the Author

Felicia Song is Associate Professor and Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Having trained in History, Communication Studies and Sociology from Yale, Northwestern, and University of Virginia, and taught at Louisiana State University’s Manship School for Mass Communication, her research is oriented around the rapidly evolving digital technology industry and how the adoption of social media and digital devices fundamentally alters the landscapes of family, community, and organizational life. In addition to her book, Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together (Peter Lang 2009), she has conducted research on expectant women’s online information-seeking habits and the evolution of “mommy bloggers” as social media professionals. Currently, she is working on a book project that explores how our contemporary digital habits form us and our imaginations about personhood, time, and place. When she is not working, she enjoys children’s chapter books, searching local consignment shops, and watching The Great British Baking Show with her husband and two children. 

Jasmine is WSAP’s book club host and vocation specialist. She hails from Sri Lanka and has a thirty-year relationship with its national university ministry, the Fellowship of Christian University Students (FOCUS). She has also been involved with InterVarsity for twenty years. She has a BA (Hons.) in English from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and a MA in International Relations from Syracuse University. She loves writing about theology impacting real life and enjoys British, Korean, and Chinese drama. Jasmine lives in upstate New York with her professor husband and two teenage children.

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