First, let me say thanks to those who have already submitted such provocative session proposals! I’m excited to workshop many of these. My offering comes out of an ongoing Mellon-funded project I’m part of as an Associate of the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center. Under the rubric of The Role of Digital Humanities in Gender Studies: From Research to the Classroom, we’re discussing and developing curricula and online resources that address feminist approaches to teaching new media, technology, and science studies.
Some of the most interesting conversations around this theme have asked: what are feminist methods? What critical literacies do we want to equip students with and how do we teach them? This includes defining key problematics around gender and technology that can be incorporated into courses — digital divides, intersectional exclusions, knowledge production and information literacy, cyber-bullying, identity/anonymity, privacy issues, labor issues, etc. But it also encompasses questions about feminist approaches (not just feminist topics) — how can we integrate teaching epistemological, ideological, theoretical skills alongside technical skills? In Laura Briggs’s words, “What would a feminist online literacy look like?” I believe this political dimension has not been as present as it needs to be in privileged and well-funded initiatives around “digital media and learning.”
It would be wonderful to hear about folks’ ideas and experiences surrounding feminist digital pedagogies in school and university classrooms and other learning contexts, and to begin identifying some central strategies and interventions. I’d also like to survey existing online resources for digital feminisms as part of this session, and talk about what they’re helpful for and what remains to contribute.
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