Hello, world!
I like the relative anonymity of the current blog format — seeing ideas for sessions without knowing who proposed them (unless I look in the WordPress dashboard). And I know that identity is a sensitive and challenging issue, in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and in terms of academic pursuits for those who are affiliated with institutions/companies where digital humanities work is seen as less scholarly.
I’m also curious, and would like to know more about people’s interests — even before we meet on Saturday. When I asked about an introductions post, Jentery mentioned that almost 30% of the registrants requested that their info remain private. I don’t want to tread on anyone’s boundaries, and so I thought I’d make this post and invite people to comment and introduce themselves and their interests according to their own preferences.
I do have an idea for a session on practical issues regarding identity and technology in the classroom, i.e. integrating materials on anonymity/pseudonymity, public/private identities, and social justice into classes of any/all disciplines. But my idea is still so fuzzy that I haven’t posted it yet, and it comes down to being curious about how other people include social justice/identity issues units in their pedagogy. (At the same time, I’m wrestling with questions about how we handle identity among ourselves (and how we can handle it better) in the communities of ed/tech and academia, and at gatherings like THATCamp.)
Assuming that I manage to come up with a slightly more expansive proposal, I’ll say more about that in its own post.
Anyway: hi! Please feel free to comment below to introduce yourself as you see fit, or not.
And to start things off, I’m Paige; and I’m finishing a dissertation in the English Department at UW, where I also work in textual studies and digital humanities.
I work with literature and economics in 18th and 19th century British poetry, and on William Blake, and I’m also working on Visible Prices, an ongoing large-scale DH project.
I feel relatively new to the topic of technology and social justice, which is to say that as a tech user, I’m actively aware of many of the issues that are arising, but that I haven’t made social justice in the 21st century a specific area of my research. (I’d like to, but I’d also like to finish my dissertation.) My introduction to tech and social justice didn’t actually come from academia at all — I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, and I really first started becoming aware of how widespread the issues were through RaceFail ’09 (just google it if you’re not familiar). And currently, of course, I’m working on finding ways to directly address social justice issues with my students as part of the work of learning academic writing, in any discipline.
Thanks, Paige! And just to introduce myself quick-like: I’m an Assistant Prof in English at UVic, and I’m generally interested in the intersections between cultural criticism and digital humanities, with a background in media and technoculture studies. Most of my work looks at the practice of culture in a digital age, and I like blending making with theory. Recently, I’ve been working on a cultural history of magnetic storage as well as some critical approaches to the attention economy (where human attention is alienated and rendered value-productive).
See everyone on Saturday! Looking forward.
I’m Matt — I’m an MA candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington with broad interests in gender, embodiment, sexuality, and technologies. For the past year, I’ve been pretty wrapped up in my master’s thesis on public bathrooms. Specifically, I’m interested in people’s reactions to alternative (non-gendered) possible configurations of these spaces.
Before I got into this area, I was interested in the gendering of technology and was planning on doing work on gender relations in geek communities. Lately I’ve been thinking about that line of research again, and so I’m considering starting some ethnographic work in a hackerspace this winter, investigating how involvement in the space and in maker/hacker communities affects people’s identities (gender, political, etc.). Plus, I think it would be a good excuse to learn some hardware and programming skills that I’ve been meaning to build up for some time now.
Between that and my involvement in social justice communities and conversations online (especially around issues of gender and sexuality), you’ve basically got the back story of my session proposal.
Hey, all – I’m Mike Tardiff, a first year MA student at Michigan State University in Writing and Rhetoric with a focus in literacy and pedagogy.
I’m most interested in how technologies can becomes spaces for critical engagement, communities of practice, and alternative literacies.