Identity Politics in the Digital Humanities

Vicky Ludas697-04 Digital HumanitiesDr. SulaFebruary 1, 2012

What is "Identity Politics"?

• The general term for groups that consciously separate themselves from the dominant narrative of straight white well-off males, in the U.S. and elsewhereo Gender/Sexuality studies

Women's studies GLBTQ studies/Queer theory Masculinity studies

o Race/Ethnic studies

• Questioning assumptions; looking at each group and subgroup as subject to different and distinct pressures, needs, and relationships with other groups

Identity Politics and Digital Humanities

As DH has now become the umbrella term for a variety of approaches and projects, what is DH? 

Computer science majors: 90% menWikipedia editors: 87% men

Coding not neutralCritique not irrelevantBoth should be taught!

The "Cool Kids' Table" meme struck many as exclusive:

"Is this field actually constructing itself through competing narratives of privileged, middle-class,

white, high-school politics in tension with privileged, middle-class, white people who work

'nicely' together?"

(Bianco, J., 2012, Debates in the DH, pp. 99-100)

Means and Methods

• Blogs and online discussion forums

• Gaming, especially Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)

o Performance art

• Distant reading

• Text analysis

• Collaborative Google Docs

• Twitter

“Becoming Dragon,” Micha Cardenas, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHEDym1aOZs

Themes

The Gender Genie: http://bookblog.net/gender/analysis.phpTuring Test,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imitation_Game#Versions_of_the_Turing_test

Alan Turing

Themes

Undermining gender norms:

Technology

http://www.queertechnologies.info/products/engendering-gender-changers/ http://www.queertechnologies.info/products/transcoder/

I create butch and gender-non-normative avatars with different video game avatar systems. My project seeks to

test and understand the boundaries of customizable avatars in commercial video

games and analyze this aesthetic flexibility with relation to how gender,

race, and sexuality function in the game’s procedures. This is Blade, my female avatar from Fable II.

-Amanda Phillips, University of California, Santa Barbara

Undermining gender norms: Gaming

http://transformdh.tumblr.com/post/12044907245/i-create-butch-and-gender-non-normative-avatars

Projects• Transform DH

o #transformDH http://transformdh.tumblr.com/  http://transformdh.org/ "Transform": not "to change,” but more "what can it become?”

• "Toward an Open Digital Humanities" Google Dochttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1uPtB0xr793V27vHBmBZr87LY6Pe1BLxN-_DuJzqG-wU/edit?authkey=CPDaqs0J&pli=1

"...[D]igital humanities must take active strides to include all the areas of study that comprise the humanities and must strive to include participants of diverse age, generation, sex, skill, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, ability, nationality, culture, discipline, areas of interest. ”

• HASTAC's Queer and Feminist New Media Spaces forum http://hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/queer-feminist-new-media-spaces

• The Feminist Humanities Project at University of Oregon http://fhp.uoregon.edu/

• Digital Sisterhood Networkhttp://digitalsisterhood.wordpress.com/

• Center for Digital Storytelling: Identityhttp://www.storycenter.org/stories/index.php?cat=7

• Invisible Australianshttp://invisibleaustralians.org/

• The Transborder Immigrant Toolhttp://post.thing.net/node/1642

• Blogs:• Queer Geek Theory, http://www.queergeektheory.org/

• Looping Threads, http://loopingthreads.com/

• Works Cited, http://nataliacecire.blogspot.com/

Questions?...