[-empyre-] HASTAC, Queer and Feminist New Media Spaces

[Margaret Rhee]

Dearest Micha and empyre,

I am so excited about the forthcoming week of the conversation of
queerness, human, and non-human! very excited by yours and Zach's
generative provocative introduction and Jacob Gaboury's post on Turing! I
am sorry for not being able to respond sooner to this message. I thought I
had until Sunday before the end of our week and hoped to use today and
tomorrow to catch up. But I like that we are listserving since we can
return to some of the email posts and continue forward as well in a
non-linear fashion for this forthcoming week.

It's been an absolute whirlwind the past two days at the Queer Feminist
conference here in Seoul with non stop activities. But it was all
wonderful. Jack gave an amazing keynote and there was such generative
conversations around his talk with queer activists and theorists here in
Korea. It was the first academic queer studies conference in the history
of Seoul, Korea I was told by the organizers, so it was a very special and
inspiring gathering. I hope to bring up some of the conversations from the
conference to this space as well.

In regards to your request Micha, thanks for bringing up 'Queer Feminist
New Media Spaces' @ HASTAC (QFNMS) I feel thinking about QFNMS and yours
and Zach's wonderful introductions already posted on low theory, unusual
archives, and alternative methodologies which really lend themselves to
one another. ie QFNMS and all the wonderful HASTAC forums led by graduate
students help facilitate alternative archives and modes of new media
pedagogy via the digital form. I actually gave a talk on digital pedagogy
for a special session that Cathy Davidson kindly convened on the future of
teaching at the recent MLA, with Priscilla Wald as an amazingly supportive
moderator. Digital humanities scholars Patrick Jagoda and Jentery Sayers
also presented on their respective digital pedagogical projects that may
be of interest to folks interested in the possibilities of pedagogy.
Jentery and Patrick do absolutely phenomenal and transformative work and
suggests questions for us on queering pedagogy and new media via the
digital education.

http://www.jenterysayers.com/

http://gamechanger.uchicago.edu/team.html

For MLA, my talk was entitled "Intimacy in Three Acts" where I attempted
to place into conversation constructionist learning (learning by creating)
and intimacy through poetry translation, HASTAC QFNMS (and HASTAC as a
virtual collaboratory) & my project From the Center which implemented a
feminist based digital storytelling education in the San Francisco Jail. I
was interested in placing in conversation intimacy as theorized by Lauren
Berlant and Larissa Hjorth and constructionist learning by computer
education theorist Seymour Papert. I included a short excerpt of the
description on HASTAC QFNMS which help describe the HASTAC forums and
others who were central to the collaborative forums like the wondrous
Fiona Barnett who directs the HASTAC scholars program.  And I want to make
mention that as graduate students, the forum opened up dialogue with so
many artists and scholars we admire in such a transformative,
non-hierarchival and inspiring ways so different from any graduate seminar
experience.  I'm remembering how via backchannel we were so excited and
did a huge virtual cheer when Alex Juhasz and Tom Bellenstorf joined the
HASTAC QFNMS conversation. It is really wonderful to engage again here at
empyre.

Below is an excerpt of my talk on the forum. Currently, I am in the
process of revising the paper for publication in a forthcoming anthology
The Digital Classroom in the Time of Wikipedia edited by Nishant Shah
(Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore) and David Theo Goldberg
(UCHRI). It's been great being back here at empyre and thinking through
these questions together as a form of queering digital pedagogy which
helps me work through these questions as well. I think the question of how
engaging on the empyre listserve differs from the HASTAC forum is also
really fruitful. As I wrote earlier, I appreciate the listserving since I
can return to some of the email posts and am hoping for non-linear ways we
can keep asking questions together. I think a major difference between the
HASTAC forum and empyre is the form (I know Im obsessed with form but
that's because I like messing them up). So the HASTAC forum is a public
space with posts aggregated via the public website, and empyre is an email
listerve. I'm feeling what's so enriching about empyre is how its queering
its seemingly standard ubiquitous use. It's exciting to be part of the
empyre community for the month and it heartens me that people here are
supportive and engaged with queering new media. And yours and Zach's
provocative, thoughtful, and visionary insights really ignite so much for
queering new media studies and for us all. Thankful to you both very much.
In some ways, I do wish our conversation could be a public site like
HASTAC so others can readily join in, but I do like the intimacy of emails
that bounce from one inbox to another for questions, responses, and
possibilities.

* excerpt on HASTAC Queer Feminist New Media Spaces:

Lauren Berlant writes in her introduction to a special issue of Critical
Inquiry on intimacy: “I learned to think about these questions  (of
intimacy) in the contexts of feminist/queer pedagogy; and how many times
have I asked my own students to explain why, when there are so many
people, only one plot counts as “life” (first comes love than,)? Those who
don’t or can’t find their way in that story—the queers, the single, the
something else—can becomes so easily unimaginable, even often to
themselves.”  As Berlant suggests non-normative questions, stories, and
plots prompted the creation of the 2009 HASTAC scholars forum: “Queer and
Feminist New Media Spaces” which I co-hosted with gaming and queer studies
scholar Amanda Philips of UCSB’s English Department.

Through the HASTAC Queer Feminist New Media Spaces Forum, we desired to
tease out queer and feminist entanglements with technology and trouble
disciplinary constraints.  But this “we” includes not only me and Amanda
but also many others.   Notably Fiona Barnett, Director of the HASTAC
scholars program, serves as—what she likes to describe—as nerd-herder. 
Indeed, we were a collective of nerds that hailed from diverse
disciplines, campuses, and departments dedicated to reimagining the
possibilities of digital learning.  As Fiona Barnett provides on HASTAC:
“Difference is not our deficit but our operating goal.”

For the HASTAC scholars program in particular, graduate students like
Amanda and I had the opportunity to collaborate and co-create public
forums as a virtual lab.  We can think of HASTAC as not simply a virtual
network but living up to the last word in the acronym, collaboratory, a
virtual lab. However this lab is accessible for anyone to engage, interact
and experiment—you just need to log on.

The Queer and Feminist New Media Spaces forum is just one example of the
many experiments on HASTAC.  Atypical in any traditional learning
structure, through the HASTAC scholar forums graduate students,
undergraduates, and the public are able to engage on a horizontal not
hierarchical space with prominent academics and practitioners, people on
our dream list of scholars included Lisa Nakamura, Jack Halberstam, and
Katie King who participated.  The public forum generated over 151 comments
and 6114 reads at this present reading. “Queer and Feminist New Media
Spaces” is now being taught in courses at universities.   Through the
public forum HASTAC scholars take on the multiple roles not only as
students, but also educators and organizers.  Through organizing a HASTAC
forum, “graduate students” learn through creating, and in doing so,
intervene in traditional mode of education and publishing.







> Hi Margaret and Amanda,
> Can you say a bit about the discussion you organized on HASTAC and about
queer and feminist spaces online?
> http://hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/queer-feminist-new-media-spaces
It seems like an important topic as we inhabit as guests this space of
empyre and how that's different from or similar to HASTAC...
> thanks,
>   micha
> --
> micha cárdenas
> PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
Provost Fellow, University of Southern California
> New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research
> MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego
> Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
http://amzn.to/x8iJcY
> blog: http://transreal.org
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre