230382 Digital Feminisms +++ausgefallen!+++ (S) (SoSe 2020)

In the past 10 years, the term feminism has grown from being an unspeakable f-word to gracing all manner of t-shirts, iPhone cases, and other consumer goods. The digital medium plays a key role in this resurgence, not the least for its ability to transmit information with near-instantaneity around the globe. While the term “digital feminism” often signifies a hashtag feminism that plays out on social media, it also encompasses digitally born art, literature, video, and performance; tools and materiality such as coding, hacking, and hardware; and the creation of collaborative communities such as feminist, queer, and anti-racist hacker- and maker-spaces or gaming collectives. Digital feminisms thus imagine new political forms and invent different worlds. At the same time, because of the viral nature of the digital realm, digital feminisms are also multidirectional in their political effects and interpretive legibility, built of uneasy bedfellows and ill-suited coalitional partners; collaborative actions of solidarity intersect not only with racist or gender-based violence of the rising far-right, but also unequal distribution of power within their own communities. This course will examine the creative products, material labour, and communities of digital feminisms as well as the transnational reach of activist impulses.

For further questions please contact Ulrike Schiefelbein (ulrike.schiefelbein@uni-bielefeld.de).