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Happy FemTechNet New Year!

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September 18, 2015

Hello and welcome to the FemTechNet Year 3! It’s hard to believe that it was only in 2012 that Anne Balsamo and Alexandra Juhasz began bringing feminist scholars together to form FemTechNet, and that this September marks our third full season of running our Distributed Open Collaborative Course (DOCC) – this year offered again as “Collaborations in Feminism and Technology.” We have grown in numbers, projects, and community and our commitment to feminist technologies, including collaboration, care, and humor, have kept us all coming back! Last year co-facilitators Elizabeth Losh, Lisa Nakamura and Sharon Irish held our course steady and continued with the great foundational work of Anne and Alex. This year we have a team of five co-facilitators — the Feminist 5  #F5 — who will be working together and with the whole FemTechNet collective to help shape and sustain our work.

So, introducing the Feminist Five #F5:

  • Anne Cong-Huyen
  • T.L. Cowan
  • Paula Gardner
  • Veronica Paredes
  • Jasmine Rault

In addition to a new team of co-facilitators, FemTechNet will be operating under a slightly shifted committee structure: this new structure reflects the work that is being done by our network and each committee welcomes new membership of feminist activists, artists, organizers, makers, hackers and scholars.

 

Committee Structure & Descriptions:

  • The Steering Committee is the decision-making, oversight and imagination body for the network. At the Steering Committee, we discuss and resolve topics and plans that affect the whole network. The Steering Committee is also where we gather regularly as a large group to connect with each other and check in on how we’re doing and where we’re going.
    • Starting in October, 2015, the Steering Committee will meet monthly on the First Friday of each month for two hours (which will include a 30min info session, a 30min social, and a 60min agenda-driven meeting). An open agenda will be posted (location TBA) and anyone involved, or who wants to be involved, with the work of FemTechNet is welcome and encouraged to attend and be part of the collective process.
    • Each Steering Committee meeting will be 2 hours long:
      • Time: noon-2:00 p.m. PT  // 2:00-4:00 p.m. CT // 3:00-5:00 p.m. ET
      • Dates: (First Friday Monthly) October 2; November 6; December 4; January 8 (second Friday); February 5; March 4; April 1; May 6; June 3
      • The first 30 minutes will function as an Information session for folks who are new to the network and others who have questions about how to be involved, how to get a FemTechNet project off the ground, etc. These information sessions will be hosted by at least one co-facilitator.
      • During the second 30 minutes we will host the FemTechNet Ultra Lounge (thanks to Lisa Nakamura for this name), which will be a FemTechNet Online Social – we’ll check in and catch up. Bring your beverage of choice!
      • The last hour of the meeting will be agenda-driven and chaired by one of the co-facilitators. The agenda will be an open document, posted the week before the meeting. If you would like to add an item to the agenda or if you would like to have input on an agenda item but can’t make it to the meeting, please add your thoughts to the document
      • All steering committee meetings will be held in FemTechNet Blue Jeans Meeting Room 1: please email femtechnetinquiriesATgmailDOTcom for the link*
      • ** If you are unfamiliar with the Blue Jeans online meeting platform, please take a few minutes before your first meeting to go through Connecting to FemTechNet with Blue Jeans: https://docs.google.com/a/newschool.edu/document/d/1B4fxbiukGY3eGsE600w8dCnX4ju8T1kdJnWqzqVqUTY/edit?usp=sharing **
  • The Community Engagement & WWW Committee builds relationships among institutions, organizations and individuals to expand FemTechNet beyond Canada and the US. This may include: offering “orientation”/get to know us sessions; presenting at consortial meetings, expanding the scope of our research activities and actions; outreach, recruitment and networking (especially encouraging DOCC teaching in new locations, and creating new collaborations with artists and activists). Plans for this year: offering “Meet Us!” orientation (live!) sessions; creating a “Meet us!” video with diverse FTN voices; outreach to community partners (advocacy & activist groups; art organizations); encouraging the development of new online town halls/teach-ins/art exhibitions/tech trainings, etc); outreach to new international participants (inviting teaching and action engagements)
  • The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Committee creates interdisciplinary conversations, curriculum, and workshops by developing materials and activities that address issues of racialization, ethnic and cultural formation, power and identity. Our focus is on intersections of digital media and ethnic studies. Anchored in the legacy of critical race and ethnic studies, we are community activists engaged in practice-based scholarship and cultural work. We aim to engage public audiences with accessible media, community outreach, and feminisms inside and outside of the academy.  
  • The Pedagogy Projects Committee (PedProCom) supports the various pedagogy projects of the network including the DOCC, our new Introduction to Online Safety & Risk activity; the Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Workbook; the Situated Knowledges Map; Keyword Videos; Town Hall Meetings; Online Pedagogy Workshops and any other teaching projects that you might want to initiate and work on. PedProCom works to mentor FemTechNet faculty, develop curricula, coordinate inter-institutional collaborations, and support community engaged learners. We are also a site of collaboration, whether for research-creation or to develop publishing projects on pedagogy related topics.
    • PedProCom Working Groups: DOCC Instructors (if you are teaching a DOCC, you are in this group); FTN Wikipedia
  • The Operations Committee facilitates the work of the network. The Committee shapes the virtual organization of FemTechNet’s socio-technical systems used to support FTN as a geographically distributed network that is accountable to differences of access along multiple vectors of power, including global location, race, class, gender, sex, and abilities that influence the network’s collaborative use of information and communication technologies. Specifically the committee manages FemTechNet Communications, Publicity, and Archiving. Currently, the Operations Committee is integrating Slack into the community’s workflow, it is also documenting the network’s uses of communication platforms throughout the collective’s history.
    • Operations Working Group: The purpose of the Tech Praxis Working Group is to shape, study and improve the infrastructure of FTN and assemble documentation on the interoperability of platforms. Plans for this year include: writing projects including grant applications, technical reports, peer reviewed essays, book chapters, and blog posts focused primarily on research and documentation around FemTechNet’s prototypes in designing, using, and hacking distributed learning systems.

As the renamed Operations Committee and its working group Tech Praxis signal, this year FemTechNet will continue to experiment with various learning and communication platforms, bending and building tools to facilitate feminist collaborations between instructors, researchers, committee and network members alike. The Tech Praxis Working Group is preparing for broader use of the EdCast learning network in FemTechNet courses and communication, which includes plans to study this platform, documenting what it enables and disables for FemTechNet, and situating it as an object of research within the collective’s fields of digital feminist tech praxis and digital media learning, through reports, posts and publications.  

We’re also aiming to prioritize the social justice work already being done within the network, and to welcome and invite engagement, participation and partnerships with even more individuals and organizations working at the intersections of trans feminist anti-racist queer disability decolonizing economic social justice and technology. While many (and certainly not all) people who have been involved in FemTechNet are economically and professionally located in the university/college systems, the network is oriented as much (or more) to alter- counter- and anti-institutional impulses, initiatives and potentialities that work beyond, against and sometimes simultaneously within the university. We hope to keep bringing in and bringing out our activist, revolutionary, transformational, hacker movement builders.

 

More about the 2015-2016 Co-Facilitators:

  • Anne Cong-Huyen – Digital Scholar and Coordinator of Digital Liberal Arts Program at Whittier College (California); Co-founder of #transformDH, steering committee member of HASTAC, member of FemBot Collective.
    • Co-facilitator’s Focus: Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Committee
  • T.L. Cowan – Bicentennial Lecturer in Canadian Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and Digital Humanities Fellow at Yale University (2015-16) & FemTechNet Chair of Experimental Pedagogies in the School of Media Studies at The New School; Independent Performance Artist; collective author, “We Are FemTechNet” Manifesto
    • Co-facilitator’s Focus: PedProCom; FemTechNet Roadshow Blog Series
  • Paula Gardner– Asper Chair in Communications, Faculty of Communication Studies and Multimedia, McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario); Senior Adjunct Professor, OCAD University (Toronto, Ontario); outgoing Chair Feminist Scholarship Division of International Communication Association, FemBot Collective Member
    • Co-facilitator’s Focus: WWW activities, Summer School Development and Organization; Seek funds for FTN activities
  • Veronica Paredes – Postdoctoral Research Associate at Department of Media and Cinema Studies at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. FemBot Collective Member.
    • Co-facilitator’s Focus: Tech Praxis Working Group; production guidance for new audio-visual materials
  • Jasmine Rault – Assistant Professor of Culture & Media, Eugene Lang College, The New School; former chair, FemTechNet White Paper Committee; collective author, “We Are FemTechNet” Manifesto
    • Co-facilitator’s Focus: Operations Committee; Social Justice Practice & Initiatives

Collaborations in Feminism & Technology Sept-Dec 2015

DOCC 2015: September – December

Collaborations in Feminist & Technology  

Open Syllabus

Stay tuned here for updates on new activities including Video Dialogue Meet-Up Screenings, Town Hall Meetings, Pedagogy Workshops, and Working Sessions.

Questions?

Contact Ivette Bayo Urban and T.L. Cowan, co-chairs of the FemTechNet Pedagogy Projects Committee: FTNPedProCom [at] gmail [dot] com

Week 1: Bodies

Week of September 21, 2015

Bodies I

Video dialogy featuring Alondra Nelson and Jessie Daniels with Lisa Nakamura and Sidonie Smith. See video here.

Readings:

  1. Alondra Nelson. “The Social Life of DNA.” Chronicle of Higher Education. 29 Aug. 2010. https://chronicle.com/article/The-Social-Life-of-DNA/124138/
  2. Jessie Daniels. “Web 2.0, Healthcare Policy and Community Health Activism.” Policy and Politics for Nurses and Other Health Professionals. Eds. Donna M. Nikitas, et. al. Sudbury MA: Jones and Bartlett (2011): 277-285.  https://www.academia.edu/6820282/Case_Study_Web_2.0_Healthcare_Policy_and_Community_Health_Activism

Making Bodies

Video dialogue with Skawennati and Heather Cassils moderated by T.L. Cowan. See video here.

Readings: 

  1. Christine L. Liao, “My Metamorphic Avatar Journey.” Visual Culture & Gender. 3 (2008). https://vcg.emitto.net/3vol/liao.pdf
  2. Henry Jenkins. “It’s 2012. Do You Know Where Your Avatar Is?”: An Interview with Beth Coleman.

Watch artist talks brought to you by FemTechNet:

Bodies II

Discussion featuring video dialogue with Dorothy Roberts and Karen Flynn moderated by Sharon Irish.

Wk 2:  Difference

Week of September 28, 2015

Video dialogue with Shu Lea Cheang and Kim Sawchuk moderated by Sara Diamond. See video here.

Readings:

  1. Nyman, Micki (2013). Interpretation makes it real: Disability and subjectivity in biopics of three women artists. Disability Studies Quarterly, 33(4). Retrieved from https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1777/3259

Suggested Readings:

Wk 3:  Feminism, Technology and Race

Week of October 5th, 2015

Video dialogue with Lisa Nakamura and Maria Fernandez, moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Readings:

  1. Lisa Nakamura, “Queer Female of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is? Gaming Rhetoric as Gender Capital,”  Ada: a Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 1. 2012
  2. Lisa Nakamura, “Cyber-race,” PMLA: Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Special issue on Comparative Racialization, 2008
  3. María Fernandez, “Cyberfeminism, Racism, Embodiment,” Domain Errors: Cyberfeminist Practices!, Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding, Michelle M. Wright, eds (New York: Autonomedia 2002).

 YouTube videos:

  1. chescaleigh, “Just Stop Talking About Race!!”
  2. Jay Smooth, “How To Tell Someone They Sound Racist”
  3. Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) – Reverse Racism

Wk 4: History of the Engagement of Feminism, Technology and Issues of Women’s Labor

Week starting October 12, 2015

Video dialogue with Judy Wajcman interviewed by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Open Source Reading(s):

  1. “Families without Borders: Mobile Phones, Connectedness, and Work-Home Divisions” by Judy Wajcman, Michael Bittman, and Judith Brown https://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/pdf/Wajcman%20Families%20Without%20Borders.pdf
  2. “Circuits of Labor: A Labor Theory of the iPhone Era” by Jack Linchuan Qiu, Melissa Gregg, and Kate Crawford  https://www.academia.edu/7268238/Circuits_of_Labor_A_Labor_Theory_of_the_iPhone_Era
  3. “Introduction” to Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory by Trebor Scholz https://www.academia.edu/2303176/Introduction_to_Digital_Labor_The_Internet_as_Playground_and_Factory

Week 5: Archives

Week starting October 19, 2015

Video Dialogue  with Lynn Hershman and B. Ruby Rich moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Readings:

    1. Lynn Hershman Leeson, RAW/WAR: Revolution Art Women project | Teknolust trailer (2002) | Documentation archive of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s artwork !Women Art Revolution (2010) available to view here on Hulu (requires a login)
    2. B. Ruby Rich “In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism” Heresies, no. 9 (Vol. 3, No. 1, 1980): 74-81. (Searchable version of Rich’s piece can be found here – pw: ftn!2014
    3. Kate Eichhorn, “Archiving the Movement: The Riot Grrrl Collection at Fales Library and Special Collections.” In Documenting Feminist Activism. Eds.Kelly Wooten and Liz Bly. LA: Litwin Books, 2012.

Week 6: Gaming & Online Safety/Risk

Week starting October 26, 2015

Video dialogue with Brenda Laurel and Janet Murray moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Readings:

  1. Consalvo, M. (2012). Confronting Toxic Gamer Culture: A Challenge for Feminist Game Studies Scholars. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 1. https://adanewmedia.org/2012/11/issue1-consalvo/
  2. “Television Interview about Harassment in Gaming.” Feminist Frequency. November 3, 2012. https://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/11/television-interview-about-harassment-in-gaming/ 

Suggested Readings:

Week 7: Systems

Week starting November 2, 2015

Video Dialogue with Lucy Suchman and Katherine Gibson Graham moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Readings: “Systems Theory and the Spirit of Feminism: Grounds for a Connection,” Barbara Hanson, pgs. 1-11, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sres.412/pdf (subject to change)

Open Source Reading TBA

 

Week 8:  Place

Week starting November 9, 2015
Video dialogue with Radhika Gajjala and Sharon Irish moderated by Alex Juhasz. See video here.

  1. Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” Marxism Today 38(1991), 24-29. https://thinkurbanism.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/a-global-sense-of-place-by-doreen-massey-1991/
  2. Brenda Nyandiko Sanya, “Disrupting patriarchy: An examination of the role of e-technologies in rural Kenya.” Feminist Africa 18(2013), 12-24.

 

Week 9:  Feminism, Technology and Sexualities

Week starting November 16, 2015

Video dialogue with Julie Levin Russo and Faith Wilding moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Readings:

  1. Manderson, Lenore (2012): Material Worlds, Sexy Lives, in in Manderson, Lenore: Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health”, Routledge. file:///Users/maria/Downloads/Material_worlds__sexy_lives-libre.pdf
  2. Traweek, Sharon (2000): “Warning Signs: Acting on Images”, in “Revisioning Women, Health, and Healing. Feminist, Cultural, and Technoscience Perspectives”, edited by A. Clark and Virginia Olesen: https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/traweek/Warning.pdf
  3. Wittig, Monique: One is Not a Woman https://research.uvu.edu/albrecht-crane/2600/links_files/Wittig.pdf 

Week 10:  Transformations

Week starting November 23, 2015

Video dialogue about the work of Beatriz da Costa featuring Donna Haraway and Catherine Lord moderated by Alex Juhasz. See video here.

Transformations, pt II

Part II features the live question and answer session following the presentations from Donna Haraway and Catherine Lord about Beatriz da Costa’s work, moderated by Alex Juhasz.

Readings: https://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/feminist-anti-mooc/instructions

The link above is an interactive reader that is available free online and is comprised of these three readings:

  1. Donna Haraway, “Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.
  2. Beatriz da Costa,  “Reaching the Limit When Art Becomes Science,” in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, eds. da Costa and Kavita Phillips (MIT Press, 2010).
  3. Catherine Lord, Summer of Her Baldness, (University of TX Press, 2004).

 

FemTechNet Roadshow Table of Contents

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FemTechNet Roadshow Blog Series

Over the past couple of months, about a dozen FemTechNet participants have presented work based on our research and teaching related to FemTechNet in a two-part FemTechNet Keywords Workshop at the CUNY Feminist Pedagogies Conference in April 2015, and at the Union for Democratic Communications Conference at the University of Toronto in May 2015. Since these gatherings brought together such divergent modes of FemTechNet engagement, we thought we’d collect and share this new work over the last two weeks of May, leading up to the 2015 FTN Summer Workshop and to the 2015-2016 season of FemTechNet’s Distributed Open Collaborative Course (the DOCC). For more information on this essay series, contact editor T.L. Cowan

Feminist by Jasmine Rault

Technology by Lisa Brundage and Emily Sherwood

Network by alex cruse

Distributed by Maria-Belén Ordóñez

Open by T.L. Cowan

Collaborative by K.J. Surkan

Course by Karen Keifer-Boyd

Governance: geek feminist critiques of the digital liberties movement by sky croeser

Improvisation by Melissa Meade and Cricket Keating

publications

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One of the major outputs of FemTechNet is a variety of different kinds of publications.

Publications include:

  • In March 2020, members of the Collective wrote Feminist Pedagogy in a Time of Coronavirus Pandemic. We shared some of what we have learned from Distributed Open Collaborative Courses.
  • The Blog: The FemTechNet blog houses many of the ongoing conversations happening within the network. Blog posts have included reflections on the DOCC process, preliminary outcomes from grant work, and invited posts from friends of the network.
  • Books and Articles: Members of the network have written book chapters and articles about everything from the nature of the evolution the DOCC to the work processes of the network.
  • Media Mentions: FemTechNet has been talked about in the press for various projects and outcomes. Learn more on our media mentions page.
  • Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Workbook: The goal of the workbook is to produce a collection of freely shared and open materials to help new and returning FemTechNet DOCC (Distributed Open Collaborative Course) instructors in tackling the difficult job of teaching race, gender, and technology.

town hall meetings 2014-2015

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As part of our 2014-15 Collaborations in Feminism & Technology programming, FemTechNet has hosted two online Town Hall meetings. These two Town Hall meetings are an opportunity for FemTechNet to gather — students, faculty, interested community members — and to consider two key issues: 1. Building International Collaborations and Online Feminist Networks, and 2. the relationship between Open Learning and Feminist Praxis.

Questions?

Contact T.L. Cowan, Chair of FemTechNet’s Pedagogy Committee (cowant AT newschool.edu)

#FemTechNet #DOCC14 #FTNTownHall 

 

Town Hall 1 – Feminist Digital Media Praxis & Safety/Risk

Facilitators: Tara Conley, Jade Davis, Alexandra Juhasz and Veronica Paredes

Tuesday Nov 25 3-4:30 EST (noon-1:30 PST)

Register by sending email to cowant AT newschool.edu: subject line – Safety. Please write a 1 or 2-sentence description of why you want to participate.

 

Town Hall 2 – Building International Collaborations through Online Feminist Networks: FemTechNet and the I Never Ask For It movement.

Date and Time:

Tuesday, Dec 16 8:30am, Bangalore, India.

Monday, Dec. 15th at 10pm EST (7pm PST).

90 mins.

Facilitators:

Radhika Gajjala

Jasmeen Patheja – contact: jasmeen.patheja AT gmail.com

T.L. Cowan – contact: cowant AT newschool.edu

In this Town Hall meeting, Radhika Gajjala, Jasmeen Patheja and T.L. Cowan will discuss a potential collaboration between the “I Never Ask For It” transnational anti-violence campaign, which Patheja coordinates, and FemTechNet, which Cowan helps to direct. We will consider how cyberfeminist practice can help us build collaborations across difference, but also how digital collaborations can obscure non-equitable distribution of resources and the global hierarchies at play in this kind of work. We will push on the hierarchies within international feminist collaborations, discuss a tiered process and action plan and brainstorm strategies with Town Hall participants for building a trans-local and transnational anti-violence movement.

Please email Jasmeen Patheja or T.L. Cowan to register with Subject Line “Town Hall.”

For information about I Never Ask For It:  https://ineveraskforit-actionheroes.tumblr.com/

Live-tweeting or to post a question: #INeverAskForIt #FTNTownHall

 

Town Hall 3 – Online Feminism and Safety

Date & Time: TBA; details are being worked out now (November 2014)

 

Town Hall 3 – Open Learning as Feminist Praxis [planned for early 2015]

 Date & Time: 90 mins. TBA

Facilitators:

Penelope Boyer – contact: penelope AT penelopeboyer.com

Andrea Rehn – contact Arehn AT whittier.edu

Feminist educators have long been committed to open learning projects (even before the Internet!) and eliminating systemic access barriers to education. Today, digital and mobile technologies offer increased possibilities for open learning, while also posing new problems of access, and economic questions about labor and profit. In this Town Hall meeting, Penelope Boyer and Andrea Rehn will facilitate a discussion prompted by the following Guiding Questions:

  1. What can Feminist Praxis bring to Open Learning projects?
  2. What happens when Open Learning is not informed by feminist and other social justice principles?
  3. What can academia-based feminism learn from Open Learning projects?
  4. What are some examples of Feminist Open Learning projects (including but not limited to FemTechNet’s DOCC)?
  5. How can FemTechNet’s DOCC build *sustainably* as an Open Learning project? What does ‘openness’ mean in this context?

Live-tweeting or to post a question: #FTNTownHall

You can drop in, or register with the facilitators. Don’t hesitate to write with a question or topic you would like to discuss during this Town Hall meeting. Please use subject line “Town Hall.”

online open office hours 2014-2015

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DOCC 2014: September – December

Collaborations in Feminist & Technology  

Video Dialogues & Online Open Office Hours Schedule

Each week from Sept 22-Dec 1st we will feature a Video Dialogue on the FemTechNet website and host an Online Open Office Hour (OOOH) for anyone involved or interested in FemTechNet to join. The OOOH times differ from week to week, so please take note of these dates and times.

There is a Town Hall Meeting scheduled for Nov 25 on the topic of Feminist Digital Media Praxis and Safety/Risk. A second Town Hall on the topic of  International Feminist Collaborations is scheduled for Dec 15/16.

Unless otherwise stated, we will host the OOOH and Town Hall Meetings on Bluejeans. All OOOH and Town Hall links will be posted to the FemTechNet website.

Questions?

Contact the course director: T.L. Cowan, Chair, Pedagogy Committee, FemTechNet (cowant AT newschool.edu)

September 26, 2014

Wk 1: History of the Engagement of Feminism, Technology and Issues of Women’s Labor

Judy Wajcman interviewed by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Elizabeth Losh and Melissa Gregg

Date/Time: Friday September 26 1-2PM PST (4-5PM EST)

Open Source Reading(s):

  1. “Families without Borders: Mobile Phones, Connectedness, and Work-Home Divisions” by Judy Wajcman, Michael Bittman, and Judith Brown https://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/pdf/Wajcman%20Families%20Without%20Borders.pdf
  2. “Circuits of Labor: A Labor Theory of the iPhone Era” by Jack Linchuan Qiu, Melissa Gregg, and Kate Crawford  https://www.academia.edu/7268238/Circuits_of_Labor_A_Labor_Theory_of_the_iPhone_Era
  3. “Introduction” to Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory by Trebor Scholz https://www.academia.edu/2303176/Introduction_to_Digital_Labor_The_Internet_as_Playground_and_Factory

September 30, 2014
Wk 2:  Archive

Discussion with Lynn Hershman and B. Ruby Rich moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Veronica Paredes

Date/Time: Tuesday September 30 | 4:00 pm ET/ 3:00 pm CT / 1:00 pm PT

Readings:

    1. Lynn Hershman Leeson, RAW/WAR: Revolution Art Women project | Teknolust trailer (2002) | Documentation archive of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s artwork !Women Art Revolution (2010) available to view here on Hulu (requires a login)
    2. B. Ruby Rich “In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism” Heresies, no. 9 (Vol. 3, No. 1, 1980): 74-81. (Searchable version of Rich’s piece can be found here – pw: ftn!2014
    3. Kate Eichhorn, “Archiving the Movement: The Riot Grrrl Collection at Fales Library and Special Collections.” In Documenting Feminist Activism. Eds.Kelly Wooten and Liz Bly. LA: Litwin Books, 2012.

October 7, 2014
Wk 3:  Feminism, Technology, and Wiki Storming

Discussion with Jacqueline Wernimont and Adrianne Wadewitz moderated by Jade Ulrich. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Jacqueline Wernimont

Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct 7 11-12 ET: 9-10 MT; 8-9 PT

Readings:

  1. Wadewitz, Adrianne “Looking at the five pillars of Wikipedia as a feminist” Part 1 and 2
  2. Sentiles, Sarah. “Writing Her In: Wikipedia as Feminist Activism” Ms. Blog, May 21, 2014

October 16, 2014
Wk 4:  Feminism, Technology and Sexualities

Discussion with Julie Levin Russo and Faith Wilding moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: María González Aguado

Date/Time: Thursday Oct. 16th from 1-2 pm EST

Meeting link:  https://bluejeans.com/669641108

Readings:

  1. Manderson, Lenore (2012): Material Worlds, Sexy Lives, in in Manderson, Lenore: Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health”, Routledge. file:///Users/maria/Downloads/Material_worlds__sexy_lives-libre.pdf
  2. Traweek, Sharon (2000): “Warning Signs: Acting on Images”, in “Revisioning Women, Health, and Healing. Feminist, Cultural, and Technoscience Perspectives”, edited by A. Clark and Virginia Olesen: https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/traweek/Warning.pdf
  3. Wittig, Monique: One is Not a Woman https://research.uvu.edu/albrecht-crane/2600/links_files/Wittig.pdf 

Suggested reading: Buchanan, Holly, Rei, Frank & Couch, Murray (2012): “The Re/Making of Men and Penile Modification”; in Manderson, Lenore: Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health”, Routledge. (Please email mariagaguadoATgmailDOTcom to get the pdf)

(For readings on the topic in Spanish, please, contact mariagaguadoATgmailDOTcom)

October 20, 2014
Wk 5:  Feminism, Technology and Race

To discuss VIDEO DIALOGUE with Lisa Nakamura and Maria Fernandez, moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Lisa Nakamura and Veronica Paredes

Date/Time: Monday October 20 | 11:00am-12:00pm ET (8:00-9:00am PT/ 10:00-11:00am CT)

Meeting link:  https://bluejeans.com/669641108

Readings:

  1. Lisa Nakamura, “Queer Female of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is? Gaming Rhetoric as Gender Capital,”  Ada: a Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 1. 2012
  2. Lisa Nakamura, “Cyber-race,” PMLA: Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Special issue on Comparative Racialization, 2008
  3. María Fernandez, “Cyberfeminism, Racism, Embodiment,” Domain Errors: Cyberfeminist Practices!, Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding, Michelle M. Wright, eds (New York: Autonomedia 2002).

 YouTube videos:

  1. chescaleigh, “Just Stop Talking About Race!!”
  2. Jay Smooth, “How To Tell Someone They Sound Racist”
  3. Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) – Reverse Racism

October 28, 2014
Week 6: Bodies

Discussion featuring Alondra Nelson and Jessie Daniels with Lisa Nakamura and Sidonie Smith. See video here.

 Office Hour Discussion led by: T.L. Cowan

Date/Time: Mon Oct. 27 7-8pm ET Changed to Tuesday 3pmET

Meeting link:  https://bluejeans.com/669641108

Readings:

  1. Alondra Nelson. “The Social Life of DNA.” Chronicle of Higher Education. 29 Aug. 2010. https://chronicle.com/article/The-Social-Life-of-DNA/124138/
  2. Jessie Daniels. “Web 2.0, Healthcare Policy and Community Health Activism.” Policy and Politics for Nurses and Other Health Professionals. Eds. Donna M. Nikitas, et. al. Sudbury MA: Jones and Bartlett (2011): 277-285.  https://www.academia.edu/6820282/Case_Study_Web_2.0_Healthcare_Policy_and_Community_Health_Activism

Making Bodies

Discussion with Skawennati and Heather Cassils moderated by T.L. Cowan. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: T.L. Cowan and K. Surkan

Date/Time: Tuesday Oct. 28 3-4pm ET

Meeting link:  https://bluejeans.com/669641108

Readings: 

  1. Christine L. Liao, “My Metamorphic Avatar Journey.” Visual Culture & Gender. 3 (2008). https://vcg.emitto.net/3vol/liao.pdf
  2. Henry Jenkins. “It’s 2012. Do You Know Where Your Avatar Is?”: An Interview with Beth Coleman.

Watch artist talks brought to you by FemTechNet:

 Bodies 2013 at Illinois

Discussion featuring video dialogue with Dorothy Roberts and Karen Flynn moderated by Sharon Irish.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Sharon Irish, combined with TL Cowan and K Surkan, above

Date/Time: Wed. Oct 29, 4-5pm EST

November 4, 2014

Wk 7:  Difference

Discussion with Shu Lea Cheang and Kim Sawchuk moderated by Sara Diamond. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Karen Keifer-Boyd

Date/Time: Tues. Nov. 4, 3-5 pm EST

How to join via Adobe Connect:

Participants to this OOOH will be joining Karen Keifer-Boyd’s class discussion and already should have viewed the FTN Difference video dialogue. Go to https://meeting.psu.edu/oooh_difference/ (Adobe Connect Penn State, no sign-in or download needed. Go to the URL and turn on your mic when speaking, and mute while others are speaking. The webcam will be enabled to see each other, and we’ll use screen share when we watch Dr. Ordóñez’s class recording of their response to FemTechNet’s “Difference” Video Dialogue and then back to viewing the seminar table with students in the class to discuss with all joining us. The Penn State students will be preparing their performative research videos in response to the FTN Difference video dialogue and present this on Nov. 11. There are 7 graduate students in the course, Including Difference. Refer to Nov. 4 details at https://cyberhouse.arted.psu.edu/difference/topics/11_subjectivity.html for links and other details during the OOOH discussion.

Readings:

  1. Nyman, Micki (2013). Interpretation makes it real: Disability and subjectivity in biopics of three women artists. Disability Studies Quarterly, 33(4). Retrieved from https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1777/3259

Suggested Readings (students in the class will have read these on Sept. 23 for the class they watched the FTN Difference video dialogue):

November 10, 2014
Wk 8:  Place
Discussion with Radhika Gajjala and Sharon Irish moderated by Alex Juhasz. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Cricket Keating & Melissa Meade

Date/Time: Monday, Nov. 10, 12-1 pm EST

Meeting link:  https://bluejeans.com/669641108

Readings:

  1. Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” Marxism Today 38(1991), 24-29. https://thinkurbanism.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/a-global-sense-of-place-by-doreen-massey-1991/
  2. Brenda Nyandiko Sanya, “Disrupting patriarchy: An examination of the role of e-technologies in rural Kenya.” Feminist Africa 18(2013), 12-24.

November 17 & 21, 2014
Wk 9: Systems

Discussion with Lucy Suchman and Katherine Gibson Graham moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Alex Cruse

Date/Time: Monday, Nov 17 (2:00pm EST)

Meeting link:  https://bluejeans.com/669641108

Readings: “Systems Theory and the Spirit of Feminism: Grounds for a Connection,” Barbara Hanson, pgs. 1-11, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sres.412/pdf (subject to change)

Systems: Games
Discussion with Brenda Laurel and Janet Murray moderated by Anne Balsamo. See video here.

Office Hour Discussion led by: Sandra Gabriele & Mia Consalvo

Date/Time: Friday November 21 at 13h00 (1pm EST)

Register by sending email to cowant AT newschool.edu: subject line – Games. Please write a 1 or 2-sentence description of why you want to participate.

On the date of the event, you will get an email with an invitation to join the online discussion via BlueJeans. When you first work in BlueJeans you will need to install a plugin, which happens almost automatically when you follow the invitation directions.

Readings:

  1. Consalvo, M. (2012). Confronting Toxic Gamer Culture: A Challenge for Feminist Game Studies Scholars. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 1. https://adanewmedia.org/2012/11/issue1-consalvo/
  2. “Television Interview about Harassment in Gaming.” Feminist Frequency. November 3, 2012. https://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/11/television-interview-about-harassment-in-gaming/ 

Suggested Readings:

November 24, 2014
Wk 10:  Performance has been CANCELLED; stay tuned for early 2015

Bilingual (Spanish & English) discussion with Maris Bustamante and Sara Diamond, moderated by Maria-Belén Ordóñez and Paula Gardner. (Video link TBA)

Office Hour Discussion led by: Maria-Belén Ordóñez

Date/Time: Monday, Nov 24 10:30-11:30 a.m (EST)

Readings:

  1. Anzaldua, Gloria “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness”  in Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza San Francisco: AuteLute Books, 1999. https://faculty.oxy.edu/ron/msi/05/texts/anzaldua-mestizaconsciousness.pdf
  2. Frieze: No-Grupo https://www.frieze.com/issue/review/no-grupo/

December 1, 2014
Wk 11:  Transformations

Discussion about the work of Beatriz da Costa featuring Donna Haraway and Catherine Lord moderated by Alex Juhasz. See video here.

Transformations, pt II

Part II features the live question and answer session following the presentations from Donna Haraway and Catherine Lord about Beatriz da Costa’s work, moderated by Alex Juhasz.

Office Hours for both videos led by: Alexandra Juhasz

Date/Time: Monday, December 1, 1PM PST

Meeting link:  https://bluejeans.com/669641108

Readings: https://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/feminist-anti-mooc/instructions

The link above is an interactive reader that is available free online and is comprised of these three readings:

  1. Donna Haraway, “Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.
  2. Beatriz da Costa,  “Reaching the Limit When Art Becomes Science,” in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, eds. da Costa and Kavita Phillips (MIT Press, 2010).
  3. Catherine Lord, Summer of Her Baldness, (University of TX Press, 2004).

 

2014-2015

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DOCC 2014: Collaborations in Feminism and Technology

The DOCC 2014, Collaborations in Feminism & Technology models collaboration as a feminist technology through a series of connected, open learning events that will allow participants to explore DOCC resources in conversation with other FemTechNet learners.

Each week features a scheduled Online Open Office Hour (OOOH!) in which FemTechNet participants gather to discuss one of our Video Dialogues along with a set of open source readings based on the week’s theme.  Everyone is welcome!

The series also includes four Town Hall Meetings on the topic of Feminist Digital Media Praxis, International Collaboration, and Safety/Risk.

The Online Open Office Hours and the Town Hall Meetings are hosted and moderated by FemTechNet faculty and are open to anyone who wants to engage in feminist collaborative, distributive teaching and learning.

 

nodes

2015 Spring

Community Venues

The New School

  • T.L. Cowan
  • Course Title: Assisted Living: Crip Theory, Cyborg Cultures
  • Number of Students: TBA
  • Level: Junior
  • Working Committees: Pedagogy (chair), Community Engagement, Steering

Ohio State University

  • Carolyn Elerding
  • Course Title: Technology and Difference: A Cyberfeminist Approach
  • Number of Students: 20
  • Level: Advanced Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: Pedagogy, Student, Steering

Texas A&M University

  • Cara Wallis
  • Course Title: Gender and Technology
  • Number of Students:
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: Wide, Wide World

University of Southern California

  • Vicki Callahan
  • Course Title: Digital Storytelling
  • Number of Students:
  • Level:

West Virginia University

  • Brian Jara
  • Course Title: Feminist Theories
  • Number of Students:
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees:

Whitter College

  • Andrea Rehn
  • Course Title: Critical Procedures
  • Number of Students:
  • Level: Undergraduate
2014 Fall

Community Venues

  • Penelope Boyer (in San Antonio)
  • Level: All levels
  • Working Committees: Communication, Community Engagement, *Paper, Steering
  • alex cruse (Oakland, CA)
  • Course Title: Dialectics of Feminism and Technology
  • Number of Students: 7-15
  • Level: All levels
  • Sarah Kember and Ben Craggs (Goldsmiths’ College, University of London)
  • Course Title: After New Media (MP3 podcasts released weekly)
  • Readings: Liquid Reader (those who wish to edit and add content need to register on the Liquid Books website)
  • Number of Students: Varied, due to entirely online availability
  • Dates: November 10, 2014-February 9, 2015
  • Level: post-graduate

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

  • Stephanie Rosen, Instructor
  • 409 Barnard Hall, Barnard Center for Research on Women, New York City
  • Dates & Cost: Tuesday evenings November 18-December 16; $315
  • Levels: Adult
  • Course Title: Technologies of Feminism
  • Contact Stephanie for more information: ssrosen(at)gmail(dot)com
  • Working Committees: Accessibility, Technology

Bowling Green State University

  • Erika Behrmann and Radhika Gajjala
  • Course Title: Feminism and Technology (Fully Online Course)
  • Number of Students: 15
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: Wide, Wide World

California State University, Fullerton

  • Karyl Ketchum
  • Course Title: Gender and Technoculture
  • Number of Students: 35 in each of two sections
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: *Paper, Pedagogy, Technology (co-chair), Steering

Colby-Sawyer College

  • Melissa Meade
  • Course Title: Gender Culture and Technoculture
  • Number of Students: 11
  • Level: lower-division
  • Working Committees: White Paper/Manifesto; Pedagogy; Student

College of New Jersey

  • Marla Jaksch
  • Course Title:
  • Number of Students:
  • Level: Undergraduate and graduate
  • Working Committees:

Cornell University

  • Maria Fernandez
  • Course Title: Feminism, Postfeminism, Cyberfeminism 
  • Number of Students: 10
  • Level: Undergraduate and graduate
  • Working Committees: Wide, Wide World

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Megan Fernandes
  • Course Title: WGS.115: Gender and Technology
  • Number of Students
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees:

The New School

  • T.L. Cowan
  • Course Title: Assisted Living: Crip Theory, Cyborg Cultures
  • Number of Students: TBA
  • Level: Junior
  • Working Committees: Pedagogy (chair), Community Engagement, Steering
    ..
  • Veronica Paredes
  • Course Title:  Collaborations in Feminism and Technology
  • Number of Students: 6
  • Level: Graduate
  • Working Committees: Ethnic Studies, Pedagogy, Steering, Technology, Video

Ohio State University

Ontario College of Art and Design University

The Pennsylvania State University

Temple University

  • KJ Surkan (also teaching part-time at MIT)
  • Course Title:
  • Number of Students:
  • Level:
  • Working Committees:

Texas A&M University

  • Cara Wallis
  • Course Title: Cultural Studies of Communication Technology
  • Number of Students:
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: Wide, Wide World

University of California, San Diego

  • Elizabeth Losh
  • Course Title:
  • Number of Students:
  • Level:
  • Working Committees: EL: Pedagogy, *Paper, Steering

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

  • CL Cole
  • Course Title: Digital and Gendered Cultures
  • Course Title:
  • Number of Students:
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: Fundraising, *Paper

University of Michigan

West Virginia University

  • Brian Jara
  • Course Title: Feminist Theories
  • Number of Students:
  • Level:
  • Working Committees:

Yale University

  • Laura Wexler
  • Course Title: Gender, Sexuality, Popular Culture and Media
  • Number of Students: TBD
  • Level: TBD
  • Working Committees: *Paper, Wide, Wide World

2013-2014

2 Comments

DOCC 2013: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology

In 2013, FemTechNet initiated a networked learning experiment involving instructors and students from several institutions in the creation of a collaborative open course structure called a DOCC:  Distributed Open Collaborative Course on the topic of Dialogues on Feminism and Technology.

The first iteration of the DOCC 2013 took place from September-December, 2013. Ideas for DOCC courses to interact are listed here, with instructions. 

Feminism and feminists have been integral to technology innovation, yet as recently as June 2012, the New York Times carried an article about Silicon Valley that opened with the line:  “Men invented the Internet.”  As technology remakes academia and the arts, critical analysis of gender, sexualities, and race have been absent in much of this re-thinking of disciplines and practices. Since the early years of Internet availability, cyberfeminists have explored the use of the Internet for dialogue and participation across various socio-economic layers worldwide. Access and skills for women and various economically underprivileged communities of the world (such as populations from the developing world and inner cities of the U.S.) were central concerns for feminists in developing distributed and participatory environments for learning, training and information exchange.

Since the mid 1990s, cyberfeminists have spent significant time and energy in developing methods for inclusive teaching. The DOCC 2013 has been created as an alternative genre of MOOC, to demonstrate the innovative process of feminist thinking that engages issues of networked infrastructures for learning, learner-centered pedagogies, collaborative knowledge creation, and transformational practices of design and media making.

A MOOC (massive open online course) is typically organized and branded by a single (elite) institution. A DOCC recognizes and is built on the understanding that expertise is distributed throughout a network, among participants situated in diverse institutional contexts, within diverse material, geographic, and national settings, and who embody and perform diverse identities (as teachers, as students, as media-makers, as activists, as trainers, as members of various publics, for example).

The organization of a DOCC addresses the collaborative nature of learning in a digital age.  A DOCC is an alternative genre of MOOC.  A MOOC (massive open online course) is pedagogically centralized and branded by a single institution. The fundamental difference is that a DOCC recognizes and is built on the understanding that expertise is distributed throughout a network, among participants situated in diverse institutional contexts, within diverse material, geographic, and national settings, and who embody and perform diverse identities (as teachers, as students, as media-makers, as activists, as trainers, as members of various publics, for example). The organization of a DOCC addresses the collaborative nature of learning in a digital age. The DOCC2013 engages participants (from North America in this version) to teach NODAL courses, each of which is configured within a particular educational institutional setting. There is no single credit granting institution. Credit is offered to students through mechanisms that are already established within particular/situated institutions.

Instructors at fifteen universities and colleges participated in the DOCC 2013.  Each instructor of a NODAL course created a course that suited her or his students, institution, locale, and discipline. FemTechNet delivered ten weeks of course content covering both the historical and cutting edge scholarship on technology produced through art, science, and visual studies.  The core content consisted of 10 Video Dialogues that feature discussions among prominent and innovative thinkers and artists who address the question of technology through feminist frameworks.  Course content grew through the exchange among participants. Dialogues on Feminism and Technology used technology to enable interdisciplinary and international conversation while privileging situated diversity and networked agency.

FemTechNet facilitated a shared pedagogical activity called Storming Wikipedia designed to write women and feminist scholarship of science and technology back into our web-based cultural archives. By engaging in the practices of editing and revising Wikipedia pages, participants address the gendered division of labor of online encyclopedia authoring and editing which is skewed now toward male participation. Through the Storming Wikipedia activities we also seek to engage a wider group of participants in the effort of writing and maintaining a digital archive of feminist work in science, technology and media so that the histories of the future will be well populated by the ideas and people who took feminism seriously as a source of inspiration and innovation in the creation of new technocultures.

Because FemTechNet is a network, we refer to our convenings–whether institutional or community-based–as nodes. Below  are the locations of the 2013-14 nodes.

nodes

Alternative Venues

  • Sharon Collingwood, Minerva OSU
  • Course Title: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology, in Second Life
  • Number of Students: TBD
  • Level: All levels
  • Working Committees: Accessibility
  • Stephanie Rosen, Northampton, MA
  • Course Title: Mass FemTechNet
  • Number of Students: TBD
  • Levels: Adult
  • Working Committees: Accessibility

Bowling Green State University

  • Radhika Gajjala
  • Course Title: Feminism and Technology (Fully Online Course)
  • Number of Students: 15
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: WikiStorming, Video, Steering

Brown University

California Polytechnic State University

  • Jane Lehr and Sandi Clement
  • Course Title: Gender, Race, Science and Technology
  • Number of Students: 32-40
  • Level: 300-level/ Junior
  • Working Committees: Pedagogy, Commons, Assessment
  • Jane Lehr and Michael Haungs
  • Course Title: Project-Based Learning in Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies
  • Number of Students: 15-20
  • Level: 300-level/Junior
  • Working Committees: Pedagogy, Commons, Assessment

California State University, Fullerton

  • Karyl Ketchum
  • Course Title: Gender and Technoculture
  • Number of Students: 35 in each of two sections
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: Communications

Colby-Sawyer College

  • Melissa Meade
  • Course Title: Gender and Technoculture
  • Number of Students: 8
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: WikiStorming, White Paper

The Graduate Center, CUNY

  • Kathlene McDonald
  • Course Title: Feminism and Technology
  • Number of Students: 8
  • Level: Offered in Women’s Studies Doctoral Certificate Program
  • Working Committees: Archive, Assessment, Steering

Macaulay Honors College, CUNY

  • Lisa Brundage
  • Course Title: Imagining Gender: Exploring Narratives of Technology
  • Number of Students: TBD
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: Pedagogy, Commons

Ohio State University

Ontario College of Art and Design University

  • Maria-Belen Ordonez
  • Course Title: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology
  • Number of Students: 9
  • Level: Graduate
  • Support from: Caroline Langill and Paula Gardner
  • Working Committees: MBO: Communication; PG: Communications, Video

Pennsylvania State University

  • Karen Keifer-Boyd (lead) with Jennifer Wagner-Lawler and Eileen Trauth
  • Course Title: Gender, Art & STEM
  • Number of Students: 6
  • Level:  Graduate
  • Working Committees:  KKB: Pedagogy

Pitzer College

Rutgers University

  • Karen Alexander and Elaine Zundl
  • Course Title: Gender Race and Techno-culture
  • Number of Students: 2 (taught as independent study)
  • Level: TBD
  • Working Committees: KA: Pedagogy; EZ: Pedagogy, Assessment, WikiStorming

The New School

  • Anne Balsamo and Veronica Paredes
  • Course Title: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology
  • Number of Students: 17
  • Level: Undergraduate
  • Working Committees: AB: Commons, Video, Steering; VP: Commons, Archive, Video, Student

University of California, San Diego 

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

  • Sharon Irish, Sharra Vostral and CL Cole
  • Course Title: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology
  • Number of Students: 18
  • Level: Graduate
  • Working Committees: SI: Communication, Archive, Steering; CLC: White Paper
  • CL Cole
  • Course Title: Digital and Gendered Cultures
  • Number of Students: 24
  • Level: Undergraduate

Yale University

FTN Roadshow Blog Series* – Improvisation

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by Melissa Meade, Colby-Sawyer College and Cricket Keating, Ohio State University

Comedian Tina Fey has recently foregrounded two key tenets of successful improvisation. The first she dubs the “Rule of Agreement.” In her words, “the Rule of Agreement reminds you to “respect what your partner has created” and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you” (Fey 2011). The second rule is that in addition to saying yes, you should add something of your own; that is, you should say “YES, AND.”

As an experiment in learning, the FemTechNet DOCC has been marked by an improvisational ethos. Indeed, from its open-ended organizational structure, which encourages educators of all sorts to join the collective, to its open-ended network of classes, to its key learning projects distributed across the network (such as Feminist Wiki-storming, Situated Knowledges Map, and Exquisite Engendering), FemTechNetters have said again and again “yes, and.”

In adding our “yes, ands” to the improvisation, we partnered the undergraduate students at Colby-Sawyer College (a private, liberal arts college of about 1400 students in central New Hampshire) and the Ohio State University (a large state university in central Ohio with about 44,000 undergraduates on a campus with about 58,000 students).

As instructors coming out of media and cultural history and political and feminist theory, neither of us particularly professionalized or skilled in digital media production, we joined this shared teaching and thinking project with a “DIY” mantra firmly in mind: a do-it-yourself feminist politics that suggests we ought not wait to be invited into circuits, but that we jump in and add our own.

As critical inspiration, we read Riot Grrrls and feminist DIY punk cultural production of the 1990s in our classes. They said, “Because we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.” Yes, and we say “FemTechNet is a power tool” (FemTechNet Manifesto).

Animating a DIY approach with an improvisational spirit to us underscored that DIY is actually a misnomer. We need others — we need each other — to do the kind of work that will upend hierarchies, eliminate violence, create room for difference in the academy and beyond, and move past individual expressions of identity, the isolated and isolating digital practices. And so began our move from DIY to DWO (doing with others).

Much has been made of the role of the amateur in digital economies. Some have heralded its presence as a liberating creative spirit, with the ability to elide expertise and professionalism directly correlated to increased participation in the marketplace of ideas (see, for example, Lawrence Lessig and Clay Shirky). Carolyn Marvin has also critiqued the rise of the professional engineer and scientist of old technologies as tied to the exclusion of women and minorities in these fields (Marvin 1988). By squashing the tinkering impulse, and the tinkerer, we reinscribe hierarchies of thought, labor, and power.

Others have noted that amateurism is too easily coopted into the logic of neoliberal economies. DIY becomes a brand, and the amateur becomes a creative psychology useful to a growing economy. Astra Taylor has noted that “the grassroots rhetoric of networked amateurism has been harnessed to corporate strategy, continuing a nefarious tradition” and warns, “When we uphold amateur creativity, we are not necessarily resolving the deeper problems of entrenched privilege or the irresistible imperative of profit” (Taylor 2014, 63- 64).

Marshall McLuhan once intoned that “the amateur can afford to lose.” Yes, and we say: “Irony, comedy, making a mess, and gravitas are feminist technologies” (FemTechNet Manifesto).

In addition to jumping into the projects already in place in the network, we added some of our own, and invited others to join us. Inspired by the Object Making key learning project, and wanting to render visible what are often invisible gendered technologies, the Colby-Sawyer students developed a Bra Project that would be showcased at a Fem Fair. Inviting others to join us in this improvisation, we put out a “Call for “Bras” across FemTechNet. Here the network said yes, and sent dozens of bras, bindings and underthings through the mail. The students decorated, mutilated, and repurposed these into visual displays of gendered technologies. The Fem Fair took place in rural New Hampshire, while capturing the spirit of the dispersed and distributed FemTechNet.

femfair1Celebrating “The Bra Project” at Colby-Sawyer College, Fall 2013

At Ohio State, our class developed the idea of Freedom Recycling Bins. Taking inspiration from the “freedom trash cans” of the feminist protests at the 1968 Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, we repurposed trash cans so that they could be used as depositories of objects that symbolized or that perpetuated oppression. We then brainstormed how each object could be recycled and repurposed to serve liberatory ends. Later, we developed a game based on the idea. Here’s how to play!

Freedom Recycling Bin: The Game

 bra-burning_freedomtrashcan.jpg?w=428&h=444

Players: Unlimited

To play, you will need:

A trash can

Markers, paper, playdough and other repurposing supplies

A timer

How to play:

  • Label a trash can a “freedom recycling bin” and put it in the middle of the room.
  • Set the timer for five minutes. In that time, each person places an object that represents or perpetuates some aspect of oppression in their lives (either the actual object or a representation of the object) into the recycling bin.
  • Break up into even-numbered teams.
  • Set a timer for 10 minutes. Racing against the clock, each team picks an object from the recycling bin and repurposes it for liberatory ends. Keep going until all the objects in the recycling bin are repurposed or until the time runs out.
  • Groups share their repurposed objects with the others. The team with the most successfully repurposed objects wins the round.
  • Repeat as often as necessary.

Speaking of the imperative of coalition work, Bernice Johnson Reagon writes: “we have lived through a period where there have been things like railroads and telephones, and radios, TVs, and airplanes, and cars and transistors, and computers. And what this has done to the concept of human society, and human life is, to a large extent… what we have been trying to grapple with” (Reagon 2000, 365).

Reagon stresses that a consequence of these technological transformations is our vulnerability– “there is no hiding place”– and our connection– we have to build coalitions through and across difference in order to survive (Reagon, 365). Yes, and we say animating these coalitions, both on and off-line, with an improvisational spirit will help us to deepen, expand, and multiply them. There won’t be a place oppression can hide.

References Cited:

FemTechNet. “Manifesto.” Femtechnet.org, 2014.

Fey, Tina. Bossypants. Little, Brown and Company, 2011.

Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press, 1988.

McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Bantam Books, 1967.

Freedom Trash Can Photo: https://mediamythalert.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/bra-burning_freedomtrashcan.jpg

Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century,” Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, Barbara Smith, ed. ([Kitchen Table Press, 1983] Rutgers University Press, 2000.

“Riot Grrrl Manifesto,” Bikini Kill Zine 2, 1991.

Taylor, Astra. The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. Metropolitan Books, 2014.

*FemTechNet Roadshow Blog Series – Over the past couple of months, about a dozen FemTechNet participants have presented work based on our research and teaching related to FemTechNet in a two-part FemTechNet Keywords Workshop at the CUNY Feminist Pedagogies Conference in April 2015, and at the Union for Democratic Communications Conference at the University of Toronto in May 2015. Since these gatherings brought together such divergent modes of FemTechNet engagement, we thought we’d collect and share this new work over the last two weeks of May, leading up to the deadline for our 2015 FTN Summer Workshop. For more information on this series, contact T.L. Cowan

FTN Roadshow Blog Series* – Governance: geek feminist critiques of the digital liberties movement

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by sky croeser

Over the last two decades, we have seen the emergence of a movement attempting to retain (or regain) democratic control of digital communications technologies. I’ve previously written about the activism emerging around this, framing it as a digital liberties movement (here and here), and Hector Postigo’s work on the digital rights movement offers another way of understanding it.

 

While the digital liberties movement is engaged in an important struggle, its politics create constraints in terms of the kinds of critiques – and solutions – it offers. It’s always tricky discussing the politics of social movements (which are always heterogeneous and fluid), but broadly speaking, the politics of the movement mostly fits within a liberal democratic framework. There are frequently challenges to aspects of the existing political systems activists are working within, but usually these go back to liberal ideals. So, for example, activists challenge state surveillance by appealing to concepts like freedom of association and freedom of speech, rather than by challenging the right of the state to exist. There’s also a strong streak of libertarianism in the movement, in the American sense of a politics which argues for greatly-restricted state power but few restrictions on the power of the market.

 

This translates into campaigns with a strong focus on individual freedom from government oppression, particularly with regards to protections for ‘free speech’ and limits on government surveillance; tactics that aim at reform, rather than deeper structural change; and appeals to an idealised free market (so, for example, complaints about the ways in which intellectual property law creates monopolies, and claims that more nimble entrepreneurship could balance the power of large corporations).

 

Many geek feminists work within, or began by working within, this movement: women have been key to the framing, campaigning, and specific projects within digital liberties activism. For example, women (including those who identify as feminists) have had an active presence in free and open source software communities, and in campaigns against online censorship and surveillance. However, many women who were initially involved in the movement have raised important criticisms of it, while others have never found the movement to represent their experiences of online technologies.

 

Obviously, there is no single political approach in geek feminist politics. There are many different, diverse, geek feminist communities – here I’m talking mostly about North American and Australian geek feminists, and what I say isn’t true for everyone who’d identify in that way. However, again, (very generally speaking) geek feminism often reproduces the focus on liberal ideals, in part because this is the politics which is most visible and available. As Alex Bayley says in a 2014 talk on the history of the Geek Feminist wiki (an important resource for the growth of the geek feminist movement, but not the only site for it), when she first began the wiki she had no education in feminism, gender studies, or related areas, and so the wiki was partly a space to host her own self education. This isn’t unusual, with many women in the geek feminist movement coming from technical backgrounds in which the only ‘activist’ politics present might be those around free software. However, resources like the Geek Feminist wiki, spaces like AdaCamp, and discussions around feminism on Twitter and in other places, is helping to establish a specific (but fluid and heterogenous) politics.
One of the key features here is an interest in intersectionality, an understanding of gendered oppression as intersecting with other forms of oppression. While this concept was initially developed specifically in the context of Black Feminism, by Kimberle Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, and others, it’s much more broadly (and sometimes shallowly), understood in the context of geek feminism today. This is leading to important critiques of the digital liberties movement’s work. For example, ‘free speech’ is both central to the politics of many digital liberties organisations, and a key feature of the rhetoric of many of those harassing women online or in other geek spaces. In the latter case, free speech is usually defined in an expansive way, in which any form of moderation of a space is positioned as ‘censorship’: this can be seen as partly the result of implementing the values of liberal democracy in spaces beyond the state (seeing governance of a conference or online community as mirroring governance of the state).
A blog post by Jem Yoshioka summarises the geek feminist critique of free speech discourse well:

The fervent devotion to free speech over everything else ends up alienating me (and many others, I’m sure). Yes, I believe in the vital importance of freedom of the press and the freedom from being censored, prosecuted or incarcerated by governments based on the expression of thoughts. But I also believe that harmful and dangerous abusive behaviour by individuals and hate groups needs to be identified and actively stamped out. It needs to be the responsibility of us all, not just the people who find themselves targeted. This is the responsibility that we take on as members of a community.

This not only critiques the idea that ‘free speech’ should be prioritised over all other values, but also signals a shift towards a more communitarian approach to governance. The appeal here is not to a top down mechanism, but rather to ‘us’: members of the communities themselves. It also represents an important shift away from individualistic liberal framings of atomised individuals, and towards an understanding of communities as shaped by structural inequalities which must be addressed through solidarity and mutual aid.
Geek feminism is also beginning to raise important critiques of capitalism, in opposition to the digital liberties’ tendency to valorise images of more flexible and technologically-enlightened capital. This is, of course, varied: faith in the market as the primary means of resource distribution is not absent from geek feminist communities. However, at the same time, there’s a growing understanding of the ways in which capitalism is inherently linked to structural oppression. This can be seen particularly in the responses to Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book, Lean In, which have begun a broader conversation about the limitations of ‘success’ within a capitalist system.
Finally, whereas the digital liberties movement tends to frame government surveillance as a concern, geek feminists are increasingly arguing that for many women, trans people, queer people, and people of colour, the key threats don’t come from their government, or don’t only come from their government. For example, trans women, and particularly trans women of colour, are at threat of state violence, but they’ve also suffered from sustained harassment online and offline for years from trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Understanding ‘surveillance’ as enacted not just by the state but also by other citizens, and often even by peers (including other activists), radically changes the kinds of resistance we might envisage.
These challenges from geek feminists are broadening the way we think about the politics of digital technologies, and encouraging a more nuanced understanding of how we can struggle for more democratic control of vital technology. They’re not the only source of such challenges, and geek feminism itself is drawing on many other stands of activism, including trans activism and anticolonial analysis. Twitter’s recent policy changes around harassment are one sign of the impact of this work – hopefully there will be others, including more radical changes to communication technologies. I’m really looking forward to exploring this in more detail as I build on the work in Global Justice and the Politics of Information and start writing more about marginalised perspectives on Internet governance and online technologies.

 

For more on my work, check out my website or follow me on Twitter.

 

*FemTechNet Roadshow Blog Series – Over the past couple of months, about a dozen FemTechNet participants have presented work based on our research and teaching related to FemTechNet in a two-part FemTechNet Keywords Workshop at the CUNY Feminist Pedagogies Conference in April 2015, and at the Union for Democratic Communications Conference at the University of Toronto in May 2015. Since these gatherings brought together such divergent modes of FemTechNet engagement, we thought we’d collect and share this new work over the last two weeks of May, leading up to the deadline for our 2015 FTN Summer Workshop. For more information on this series, contact T.L. Cowan

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