Discourse Matters

ID: A pin-up of eight student-annotated works in A4 prints set against a white wall, covering propositions and practices connected to The Body; Archive; Social Media; Videogame; Artificial Intelligence; Critical Digital Literacy; Digital Feminism; and Disability Justice. This pin-up on the first day of class followed a community reading and discussion of my Monsoon 2023 graduate seminar course syllabus on Gender and Technology. Image courtesy of Kush Patel (August 2023).

With the Monsoon semester under way, the Just Futures Co-lab welcomed Akshay Shintre (PhD student in Art, Design, and Transdisciplinary Studies) and Ananya Vepa (PGDP student in Contemporary Art Practice) to the lab’s Queer Futurities space. Within the newest doctoral cohort, Akshay’s research interests include media culture, sexuality, photography, and cultural belonging—and an emerging focus on queer language and visual representation in regional archives. In the context of their ongoing postgraduate diploma studies in Contemporary Art Practice, Ananya brings with them a set of experiences in studying and documenting the politics of sexuality and gender self-determination both empirically and through creative making [1]. At the Co-lab, Ananya will contribute to building the ongoing Queer and Trans Syllabus/Bibliography Project by authoring a keyword entry on sensitivity.

Each week, my graduate reading seminar on Gender and Technology also brings eight brilliant students to the Co-lab representing specializations in Contemporary Art Practice (Ananya Vepa, Anan, Arya Patil, Vaibhavi), Curatorial Practices (Bavisha Varigonda), Experience Design (Faguni Singh), Human-Centered Design (C. Reethika), and Information Arts and Information Design Practices (Shree Agrawal). By centering projects and methods in critical digital humanities, we cover scholarship produced by women and gender minorities through time and towards justice-oriented goals; address structural challenges, gender discourses, and socio-technical critiques connected to each of the chosen works; and examine how colonialism, casteism, racism, ableism, and cis-heteropatriarchy overlap as historical-contextual supremacies as well as how Indigenous, caste-oppressed, Black, disabled, women, queer, and trans scholars are showing us other ways of thinking with and relating to technology. 

The structuring of the syllabus around three parts (Part I: Bodies, Part II: Spaces, and Part III: Desires) followed my workshop on the very first day of class where I had the students read, annotate, and discuss in community a set of pre-selected excerpts each on the body; archive; social media; videogame; artificial intelligence; critical digital literacy; digital feminism; and disability justice. These selections covered a range of peer-reviewed publication forms both single- and co-authored, namely, journal articles, book chapters, artworks, digital archives, web-based writings, electronic literature, and videogames. The resulting pin-up and group share activity not only clarified for me, and us, the learning goals of this seminar, but also enabled me to consolidate materials based on student interests for close engagements with works by each of the following scholars in the weeks ahead: 

Ai Binh T. Ho, Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, Rebecca Sanchez, Remi Yergeau // Ajantha Subramanian // Aimi Hamraie // Aishatu Gwadabe // Ameya Bokil, Avaneendra Khare, Nikita Sonavane, Srujana Bej, and Vaishali Janarthanan // Nikita Sonavane and Srujana Bej // Anna Anthropy // Amanda Phillips and Bo Ruberg // Claudia Lo // Donna Haraway // Elizabeth LaPénsee and Nichlas Emmons // Gail Omvedt and Govind Kelkar // Hil Malatino // Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite // Jennifer S. Light // Jillian Weise // Julia DeCook // Kavita Bundelkhand // Kimberly Fernandes // Lesbian Herstory Archives // Lorena O’Neil // Maria Coterai // Marisa Elena Duarte // Max Liboiron, Justine Ammendolia, Katharine Winsor, Alex Zahara, Hillary Bradshaw, Jessica Melvin, Charles Mather, Natalya Dawe, Emily Wells, France Liboiron, Bojan Fürst, Coco Coyle, Jacquelyn Saturno, Melissa Novacefski, Sam Westscott, Grandmother Liboiron // micha cárdenas // Minket Lepcha // merritt kopas // Nadika N // Naomi Clark // Padmini Ray Murray // Palashi V // Priteegandha Naik // Precarity Lab // Radhika Gajjala and Maitrayee Basu // Raven Maragh-Lloyd // Roopika Risam and Susan Edwards // Safia Umoja Noble // Sasha Costanza-Chock // Shirley J Jackson, Moya Bailey, and // Brooke Foucault Welles // Soha El-Sabaawi (Soha Kareem) // Stephanie Rosen // Tara Robertson // Vijeta Kumar.

The start of this semester saw the return of SMI alumnx and lab members to campus as part of my MA in Technology and Change orientation program. Thank you Gayatri Shanbhag (MDes Industrial Art and Design Practice 2023), Ruchika BN (MDes Design Computation 2023), Dhanyashri Kamalakannan (MDes Human-Centered Design 2023), and Vikash Raj (MDes Design-Led Innovation 2022) for sharing your individual reflections on how the MA TC course units, including transdisciplinary research at the Co-lab, informed your inquiry-based learning at the postgraduate level as well as sharpened your approaches to crafting future technology-aided practices in art and design. 

Notes

[1] Ananya Vepa, “Self Respect, Self Determination, State Recognition: Studying the Tamil Nadu Government’s LGBTQIA+ English and Tamil Glossary,” Social Studies Capstone Unpublished Thesis (Advisors: Professor Annu Jalais and Dr Karthick Narayanan R), School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences, Krea University, June 2023.

Opportunities

+ Job / Call for Applications: Project Mukti, a a Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi women and children focused start-up working to end the effects of caste, tribe, and class discrimination via curricula development and workshops (Deadline: September 30 and ongoing)
+ Attend: Critical AI Literacy in a Time of Chatbots: A Public Symposium for Educators, Writers, and Citizens, Rutgers University, October 6, 2023 (Zoom Registration Link)
+ Call for Applications: CREA Feminist Leadership, Movement Building and Rights Institute – South Asia, Sri Lanka (January 24 to February 1, 2024) (Deadline: October 15, 2023)
+ Call for Applications: HASTAC 2023-2025 Fellows: HASTAC Scholars brings together dynamic graduate and undergraduate students pushing boundaries in the arts, humanities, sciences, and technology (Deadline: October 31, 2023)
+ Call for Papers: Research Workshop on Gender, Youth, and Media in Asia, NUS, Singapore (Deadline: November 3, 2023)
+ Call for Participation: Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) 2024 at the University of Victoria, Victoria (Early Registration Deadline: April 1, 2024 / Regular Registration Deadline: June 1, 2024)

About

Felt Notes are monthly dispatches about the work of the Just Futures Co-lab, and the co-labouring worlds of research and teaching in art, design, and the digital humanities that it scaffolds, furthers, and amplifies. The letter writing will translate the ever so negotiated nature of this space and the discourse and scholarship on equity and justice we produce through critical pedagogy; archives and databases; interactive digital storytelling; and inquiries into queer-feminist media technologies and infrastructures. 

I hope reading this letter and its upcoming segments are a meaningful experience for you. If you aren’t subscribed yet, you may do so here. If you are already subscribed, I would love for you to share the link with friends and trusted networks as we make sense of our relationships to technology as well as our relationships to each other via technology. If you would like to write or co-write a letter in the future or share any announcements, please feel free to get in touch with me, and whilst you’re here, please also check out the Felt Notes Archive. 

Kush Patel