Digital Embodiment: Feminism, Technology, and the Self

Digital technology is often imagined in dematerialized terms, a virtual space of clouds and flows and disembodied selves. Yet, as many attest, digital and online activities always take place somewhere: at desktops, while commuting, at home. Cloud servers have to be located somewhere, and even fiber optic cables have material limitations. As geographer Mark Graham puts it: “Imagining the internet as a distinct, immaterial, ethereal alternate dimension ultimately makes it more challenging to think through the contingent and grounded ways in which we consume, enact, communicate and create through the internet.”

Conversely, to the extent that digital worlds exist in their own right (such as persistent virtual worlds and massive multiplayer RPGs), selves can be embodied digitally. This interplay between the digital and the embodied, virtual and material, indicates rethinking the relationship between understandings of the digital—as a space apart, disembodied—and the physical, material world, as hard, resistant, and limiting. This seminar will cover classic and emerging literature at the intersection of digital media studies, cultural theory, science and technology studies, and feminist thought, including the work of Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Tim Ingold, Patricia Clough, Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi, Annemarie Mol, and more. Topics will include cities and spaces, bodies and selfhood, sensing and affect, and the rise of wearable technologies and personal data.

Course Schedule

Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm
June 07 — June 28, 2016
4 weeks

$315.00

Registration Closed

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