A Dear Colleague letter for breastfeeding moms

Building on Miriam Posner’s excellent blog post about the needs of breastfeeding event attendees, I’ve put together a short letter that you can lift for communicating about breastfeeding needs. I want to encourage people to proactively let organizers etc know that these are normal, acceptable accommodation requests. I’ve been watching the twitter conversation on this topic with horror – no job candidate should EVER face jokes or difficulties when on a campus visit while still breastfeeding, let alone be walked in on while pumping milk. So you might consider adopting this as a “Dear Search Committee Chair” letter too. I recently had to step in on behalf of a new colleague during an orientation when facilities staff insisted that she not store her breastmilk on campus. If you’re organizing an event or a search visit, make these plans in advance. Everyone will thank you.

“Dear Colleague,

I am a lactating/breastfeeding mother and I am attending your upcoming event. Here’s what would be helpful for me in terms of accommodations:

a private, clean space that:
-is proximate to the scheduled events (I am already bummed to be missing panels/speakers/etc and the less time I can take the better)
-is available throughout the day
-is private (door and shutters that close)
-has some seating near a power outlet

-a way to refrigerate the breast milk – perhaps there is a faculty lounge with a fridge or a facilities kitchen where the milk can be stored. Please do not put me in the position of having to argue with staff about health codes and my breast milk – it’s not contagious or a contaminent.

-If there is no refrigerator access, a place to store a small cooler that will be accessible throughout the day

-A safe place to store my pumping equipment that is also accessible during the day

I’ll bring all of my pumping equipment and storage vessels, along with a way to clearly label the contents – who knows, there might be several of us and we’ll need to distinguish our bottles!

Please note that a public restroom is not an acceptable solution. A single person restroom that locks and has a power outlet could do in a pinch, but is not ideal.

Thank you,

Signature

Feminist Dialogues on Technology: Pitzer MS 134

The syllabus below is from the spring 2013 beta run of FemTechNet’s Distributed Open Collaborative course on feminist technology.

The course will have it’s first full, international run in the Fall 13 at the following institutions.

Bowling Green State University
Pitzer College
CUNY
Penn State
Ontario College of Art and Design
The New School
Brown University
Rutgers
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Goldsmiths University of London
Bucknell University
SUNY
UC Irvine
Ohio State University
Colby-Sawyer College
California Polytechnic State University
Yale

FEMINIST DIALOGUES ON TECHNOLOGY

https://www.facebook.com/groups/101380023365583

A Distributed Open Collaborative Course (DOCC)

A mixed-mode, learning experiment linking undergraduate students at

Pitzer College and Bowling Green State University

with graduate students at USC and UCSD

PIT MS 134, Spring 2013, Thursdays 9-11:50

Alexandra Juhasz, Pitzer College, Fletcher 226

Office Hours: Weds 1:30-2:30 and 4-5

and by email appt: alexandra_juhasz@pitzer.edu

Dr. Radhika Gajjala, Phd, BGSU

Office Phone: (419) 372-0586
Email: radhika@cyberdiva.org
Skype ID: cyberdivaskype
Google hangout ID: gRadhika2012
Virtual Office Hours: M and W 12:30 PM – 2.00 and by appt.

In this course, we’ll be exploring the ways that gender and technology have defined and
redefined each other socially and culturally. The course introduces students to key issues in Feminism and Technology within the context of American Culture, Globalization, and Media Studies.

The course is based on collaborations between students and professors at Bowling Green State University, Pitzer College, University of California San Diego and University of Southern California (IML555 Digital Pedagogies).

It is part of a larger project (see http://fembotcollective.org/femtechnet/), so Spring 2013 students will participate in ongoing collaborations in feminism, technology, video, art and craft. Some of the best projects will be showcased worldwide in online portals and offline in feminism and technology related exhibits.

Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/RGajjalas-Courses/313468268770326 and like the page. Other interaction will occur on Sakai, Wikipedia, and Social Book.

Thursday, January 24: Introductions

View in class

Keyword videos by BGSU students

Join one of ten theme groups with BGSU students

Thursday, January 31: Responses

Required Reading

TechnoFeminism, Intro, 1-2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:STUDENT

Assignment 1: In groups respond to one of the BGSU videos

February 7: TechnoFeminism: Adrianne Wadewitz

Required Reading: Discussion Online

(post 1 summary and 2 responses, minimum)

TechnoFeminism Chapters 3-5

Guest lecturer, Adrianne Wadewitz, will lead a tutorial on Wikipedia, this will be taped and shared with the BGSU students

Feb 14: MACHINE

Required Reading

Lucy Suchman: (2011) “Subject Objects.” Feminist Theory, 12 (2): 119-145

Wendy Chun: Chapter 1, Programmed Visions (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011).

February 21: BODY

Required Reading

Rosi Braidotti: “Meta (l) Morpheses,” Theory, Culture and Society, 14:2 1997:

67-80.

Alondra Nelson: “Future Texts,” Alondra Nelso, Social Text, 71: 20

(Summer 2002).

Feb 28: ARCHIVE

Lynn Hershmann: !Women Art Revolution: A (Formerly) Secret History (2011):

womenartrevolution.com.

“Introduction,” Lynn Hershmann, ed., Clicking In, Hot Links to a Digital Culture. Seattle: Bay Press, 1996.

Carol Long/Derek Hook Hook, D and Long, C. (2011). “The Apartheid Archive Project, heterogeneity and the analysis of racism.” Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 16, 1-10.

March 7: LABOR (online class for Pitzer)

Required Reading

Judy Wacjman: “TechnoCapitalism Meets TechnoFeminism: Women and Technology in a Wireless World,” LABOUR & INDUSTRY, Vol. 16, No. 3, April–May 2006

Jodi Dean: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/beyond-clicktivism-jodi-dean-on-the-limits-of-technology-in-the-occupy-movement

http://occupyeverything.org/2012/occupation-as-political-form/

March 14: DIFFERENCE

Required Reading

Karen Barad: “Posthumanist Performativity: How Matter Comes to Matter”

(originally published in Signs in 2003)

Shu Lea Cheang: http://www.compostingthenet.net; http://babywork.biz; http://www.u-k-i.co/

SPRING BREAK

March 28: SYSTEMS

Required Reading

Brenda Laurel: “Design from the Heart,” in Women, Art and Technology,

Judy Malloy, ed., MIT Press, 2003.

Janet Murray: “Toward a Cultural Theory of Gaming: Digital Games and the

Co-Evolution of Media, Mind, and Culture,” Popular Communication, 4(3), 185-202, 2006.

2nd Video Due: Mid Term

April 4: PLACE

Required Reading

Katherine Gibson: “The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A feminist critique

of political economy.” Oxford: Blackwell, Progress in Human Geography, 11,

2010.

Kavita Philip: “”English Mud: Toward a Critical Cultural Studies of Colonial

Science,” in Cultural Studies, 12 (3) 1998 pp. 300-331

Mona Hartoum:

http://bombsite.com/issues/63/articles/2130

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JEtC2UU5ak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOvzOBMHc0s

whitecube.com/exhibitions/mona_hatoum_bunker_masons_yard_2011/

April 11: RACE: Via Social Book and Virgina Kuhn’s Students in Digital Pedagogies

Required Reading

Maria Fernandez: 2003. “Cyberfeminism, Racism, Embodiment.” In Domain Errors! eds. Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding, and Michelle M. Wright. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia. http://refugia.net/domainerrors/DE1b_cyber.pdf

Lisa Nakamura: “It’s a Nigger in Here! Kill the Nigger!”: User-Generated Media Campaigns Against Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Digital Games.” The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, edited by Angharad Valdivia (Blackwell: forthcoming).

(a critique by Jesse Daniesl: Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment, Women’s Studies Quarterly 37: 1 & 2, Sproing/Summer 2009.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wsq/v037/37.1-2.daniels.html)

April 18: SEXUALITIES

Required Reading

Josephine Ho: Ping Wang, The Prosecution of Taiwan Sexuality Researcher and Activist Josephine Ho, Reproductive Health Matters 2004;12(23):111–115

“In Defence of Academic Research and Internet Freedom of Expression,” InterAsia Cultural Studies 6.1 (March 2005): 147-150. (In English), 2005.

Faith Wilding: “Becoming Autonomous,” technics of cyber-feminisim, Ed. Claudia Reiche and Andrea Sick. Bremen: thealit Frauen.Kultur.Labor, 2002; or “Where is Feminism in Cyberfeminism” Feminist Art Theory. Ed. Hillary Robinson. Blackwell: UK, 2001.

(Live Dialogue: Haraway and Lord about Da Costa, LACE, April 19)

April 25: TRANSFORMATION: Via Social Book and Virgina Kuhn’s Grad Students

Required Reading

Donna Haraway: “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism,”

Catherine Lord: “June 2001 (Looking Backward: Confessions of Her Baldness),” in Summer of Her Baldness, University of Texas Press, 2004.

Beatriz Da Costa: Introduction (with Kavita Philip) and “reaching the Limit: When Art Becomes Science,” in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism and Technoscience (MIT: 2010).

All Wiki Work Due

May 2: Craft/Gift Exchange!

1) ORGANIZATIONAL STUFF

Attendance and Participation: I believe that participation is a vital aspect of the class. I expect you to come prepared and to contribute to class discussions: both on and offline.

Required Reading: All reading is due before class. Come to class prepared to discuss it. There is one required book at Huntley, it is also available at Honnold on reserve. The rest of the articles will be available on Sakai or online.

TechnoFeminism, Wacjman

Cybercultures Reader, David Bell (optional)

2) Technical help and info

KEYWORDS VIDEOS:

The How to Make a FemTechNet Keyword or Book Trailer Video Guide: on Sakai

http://archive.org/details/FemtechnetKeywordVideos

http://keywords.pitt.edu/whatis.html

WIKIPEDIA:

You will need A Wikipedia login account. You will have to create one, so go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and create one and email your login id (not your password) Radhika@cyberdiva.org in an email message with a subject line that contains your real name and the course name “ACS/WS 3000: Wikipedia login id _ your name”.

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/The_Syllabus

FACEBOOK:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/101380023365583

3) Course Work:

There are four assignments:

Wiki Work: 30%
Keyword Videos (2): 30%
Craft Projects: 30%
Participation: 10%

1. Wiki work: Content creation; content editing; language correction connected to an author and the theme of your craft project

- wiki stubs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub

-Edits on featured articles on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FA
-edits not just entry length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles

2 assignments:

1) work on a featured author’s page: 10 edits; 500 words (or a section); 1-2 reputable sources: present your work to-date when that author is discussed; due April 25 (“general improvement of the article to reflect sourcing standards on Wikipedia and neutral point of view” and make grading include both the inclusion and deletion of information as well as the tone of the writing. The students should be deleting information that is not sourced – that is just as important as adding what is sourced.)

2) follow a topical discussion related to your theme: follow talk page, post at least 10 times on talk page (and/or article) in relation to feminism and technology

3) write 2-3 page reflection paper on your wiki work: due April 25

2. Keyword Videos:

First one is ungraded; second one is your mid-term, due March 28

An “A” video has a clear argument that thoughtfully and explicitly links one of the themes to larger issues raised in the readings, and other course materials. Technical polish is not necessary, but your videomaking should not hinder our comprehension of your argument. The quality of your prose, images, and ideas will also be considered.

3. Craft Project: DIY object around one of 10 themes: alone or in groups, first draft is due on the day of theme, to be presented and discussed (live at Pitzer and digital presentation by BGSU)

As a final project on May 2, you will swap your object with other class participants.

All students working on the same theme need to present their objects TOGETHER on the day of the swap, on whatever platform they choose.

An “A” object expresses an understanding or argument about your theme that thoughtfully and explicitly links to larger issues raised in the readings, and other course materials. Technical or artistic polish is not necessary, but your lack of skills should not hinder our comprehension of your object. The quality of your object’s construction and ideas will also be considered.

Learning Outcomes

Students are asked to investigate, connect, write, present, participate, and lead proficiently. From these overall learning outcomes, you will meet the specific objectives of this course detailed below.

You will:

Investigate the interplay of technology and everyday materiality, and its relationship with American culture and Globalization. Through this investigation, you will become critical consumers of media and sensitive and articulate global communicators, with an awareness of how intersections of race, gender, class and culture shape the use and production of technologies world-wide.
Connect theory and practice of feminism along the key themes presented in this class. You will also connect with the world by communicating and collaborating in research with other students on current concerns about feminism and technology. Through this connection, you will relate one’s self and culture to diverse cultures.
Learn to edit the Wikkipedia and understand the culture of the Wikkipedia in relation to gendered hierarchies. Thus you will acquire hands-on applied skills.
Learn to make keyword videos using easily available digital tools (or apps) of your choice. Once again learning hands-on applied skills through doing class work.
Virtually present your written work and ideas to the classes involved in this collaboration.
Learn to work in virtual collaborative teams. Skills very necessary to the effective function of global organizations in present day American economic conditions.
Participate actively and with sophistication in class through the use of social media and other online tools.
Lead discussions through online communication with your peers. You will lead learning in the course by suggesting engaging, innovative and meaningful discussion topics. You will lead by contributing to the discussions suggested by other.

1 Comment

by jwernimont on April 22, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Feminism, FemTechNet, gender, pedagogy

Posted by jwernimont on April 22, 2013

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/ms134/

TCFW: Feminism – the right to say ‘no’ in all contexts

The title of this THATCamp Feminisms wrap up post is an approximation of my favorite quote from TCFW’s events (there was too much good that came from the event for a single post, so there will be a series). Several of us were in a session on Feminist Collaboration and Adrianne Wadewitz reminded us that in so far as feminism is about empowering women, it is about supporting our right to say ‘no’ not just in sexual encounters, but in all kinds of contexts. In this particular context, this might mean saying ‘no’ to an excessive service load, to being the sole representative for gender/sexuality issues on campus, to being the one who does everything. It was the third reminder I’d had that week to say ‘no’ and it was the one that finally stuck. Why? Because it helpfully recast what I was seeing as myriad “Important Opportunities/Needs” as compulsory forces.

Let me take a moment to parse that statement. I look around and see a lot of work to be done, a lot of work on behalf of gender, race, class, and sexuality equality. I see a lot of need and a lot of opportunity to effect change at local, national, and international levels. In those needs I see a great deal of opportunity for change and I want to help bring about that change. THATCamp Feminisms arose because of a set of conversations that were happening virtually that deserved our more concentrated efforts and in person meetings. I saw a need and moved to address it. That’s great, but I see need everywhere these days and even when I limit my scope to the areas where I have the most interest/talent/training it’s still more than I can tackle. The needs here on campus are enough to exhaust a single person.

When colleagues suggested to me that it was critical to my career and well-being that I say ‘no’ more often, I understood what they were saying. I see the ways that one needs to navigate a career, choose her battles, and protect the room to get scholarship done. But I also have strong passions and those passions are what feed my work, and I think that this is a good approach to work – I have to care about what I’m doing if I’m going to really do it well – and I felt passionate about the opportunities that I was seeing everywhere. So the “say no, Jacque” exhortation often felt like a suggestion to squash what makes my work vital and interesting in order to survive; it felt like rejecting opportunities in which I was invested or turning away from those to whom I feel responsible (like my students).

What Adrianne’s observation helped me to see, with startling clarity and speed, is that there are other ways to see the situation. It’s not that I need to give up on the things I care about or am committed to; it’s that the system is designed to make me feel that I should be responsible for all of this work, that ‘yes’ is the only acceptable answer when faced with the next Important Thing. It may not have been Adrianne’s intent, but the form of her comment activated a metaphor: suddenly all of this opportunity to address need was recast as a threatening sexual need, a set of uninvited advances. The beauty of the metaphor is how quickly it clarified things for me. For example, my chosen position as an academic woman was no more invitation to be responsible for all of this mess than a short skirt might have been an invitation to rape.

This isn’t a new insight and I certainly have enough training to know this, but I didn’t feel it. I don’t think I’m alone in this either. The TCFW conversation found it’s way into a conversation with a group of women who are all faculty at Harvey Mudd, our science and engineering school in the consortium. Women were sharing their experiences being told as junior faculty to “say ‘yes’ to everything” to think of invitations as welcome “validations” and a colleague’s rejoinder to make ‘no’ the default was quickly cited. The conversation then turned to how hard that advice is to follow. A friend then cited our colleague’s advice to “fuck the guilt” and I think this is part of why the rape metaphor – a powerful and risky metaphor to be sure – works for me. When work is cast as addressing need or taking advantage of special opportunity, it’s easy to feel guilty. When those “important” or “validating” opportunities or “urgent” needs are cast as an uninvited compulsory force, I don’t even entertain the possibility of feeling guilty.

The power of the metaphor – cultural or professional Need/Opportunity as pushy date – is that it let me feel the threat. Suddenly ‘no’ was not a rejection of opportunity or need, but the articulation of my own right to not be responsible for fixing everything and to pursue my work. Saying ‘no’ isn’t a rejection of opportunities or an expression of ingratitude because I have the right to work on the issues/texts/objects that I think are important *without becoming responsible for fixing an entire system of inequity.* Do I acknowledge my own privileges and responsibilities? Yes. Does my work engage with colleagues and students in ways that seek to address inequity? Yes. Do I need to feel compelled to “take advantage” of every “opportunity” that comes my way? No. Is it ok to say ‘no’ *for any reason*? Yes.

Now, even as I write the above I find myself uncomfortable. There are opportunities that I want to take advantage of and that I feel indebted to others for creating – not all needs and opportunities are like sleazy date who won’t take no for an answer. Not all opportunity is opportunistic. I also understand the violence of a metaphor of compulsory sexual force and I use it with seriousness – I think the sense of professional and personal threat that some women experience in those moments when they say ‘no’ warrant the metaphor. For me, as a corrective to my sense that saying ‘no’ was closing doors, shutting down possibilities, and turning away from serious needs, thinking about feminism as the right to say ‘no’ in all contexts is incredibly empowering.

2 Comments

by jwernimont on March 25, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in events, Feminism, gender, Profession

Posted by jwernimont on March 25, 2013

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/feminism-saying-no/

Feminisms and Technology, a bibliography in progress

I’ve been working on a now forthcoming article on feminisms and digital archives (for Spring DHQ) for a couple of years now. While the article initially was going to ask if XML and XSLT (markup and transformation languages used in many digital archives) could be thought of as feminist, I ended up writing a piece that talks about how difficult that question is to even ask. There are incredibly complex social scenes in which these tools are deployed, and most work today in technology studies acknowledges the “technosocial” scene as important to theorizing a tool. But even before dealing with the scenes of tool usage, I found that I had an incredibly difficult time finding many good resources on feminisms and digital technology of the sort used in digital archives. In even the best of situations, I was using work that addressed very different kinds of technology and that presents certain challenges.

The FemTechNet list has recently been chewing over the issue of feminist technologies and tools and others have noted the relative paucity of the literature. So, in the collaborative and distributed spirit of FemTechNet, I’d like to ask for your help adding to my bibliography. This particular piece has a specific focus, but I’m interested in developing a much larger bibliography so please comment with any citations that you think are relevant to the study of feminist technology/information design/digital tools. I’ll repost an updated bibl for those who are interested.

Thanks!

[Balzas 2000] Balzas, S. “The Orlando Project.” 2000. http://www.tei-c.org/Activities/Projects/or01.xml

[Bianco 2012] Bianco, J.S. “This Digital Humanities Which is Not One,” Debates in the Digital Humanities, Matthew K. Gold, ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012: 97

[Booth 2008] Booth, A. “Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present (review).” Biography, 31.4 (2008): 725-734.

[Brown, et al Unknown] Brown, S., Clements, P., and Grundy, I. “Documentation.” Unknown. http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svDocumentation

[Brown, et al 2005] Brown, S., Clements, P., Elio, R. and Grundy, I. “Between markup and delivery: Tomorrow’s electronic text today” in R. Seimens (Ed.), Mind Technologies, 15-32. University of Calgary Press, 2005.

[Brown, et al 2010] Brown, S., Clements, P., and Grundy, I. “The Orlando Project.” 2010. http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/orlando/

[Brown, et al 2007] Brown, S., Clements, P., Grundy, I., and Balazs, S. “An Introduction to The Orlando Project” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 26.1 (2007): pp. 127-134.

[Craig, et al 2011] Craig, C. J., Turcotte, J. F., and Coombe, R. “What is Feminist About Open Access?: A Relational Approach to Copyright in the Academy” Feminists@law, 1.1 (2011): pp. 1-35. http://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article/view/7/25

[Davidson 2008] Davidson, C. “Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Prediction” PMLA 123.3 (2008): pp. 707-717.

[Earhart 2012] “Recovering the Recovered Text: Diversity, Canon Building, and Digital Studies.” This talk was given at DH2012 in Hamburg, and in a modified format at the University of Kansas. The video of the latter can be found here

[Flanders 2007] Flanders, J. “Electronic Textual Editing: The Women Writers Project: A Digital Anthology.” In J. Unsworth, K. Brian O’Keeffe, and L. Burnard, Electronic Text Editing

http://www.tei-c.org/About/Archive_new/ETE/Preview/flanders.xml

[Flanders and Wernimont 2010] — and Wernimont, J. “Feminism in the Age of Digital Archives: The Women Writers Project” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 29.2 (2010): 425-435.

[Fraiman 2008] Fraiman, S. “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens—With Help from a New Digital Resource for Literary Scholars,” Modern Philology, 106.1 (2008): pp. 142-48.

[Freshwater 2003] Freshwater, H. “The Allure of the Archive” Poetics Today, 24.4 (2003): pp. 729-758.

[Haraway 1991] Haraway, D. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth-Century,” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Available at http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/

[Juhasz 2010] Juhasz, A. “The Views of the Feminist Archive”

http://flowtv.org/2010/05/the-views-of-the-feminist-archive-alexandra-juhasz-pitzer-college/

[McPherson 2012] McPherson, T. “Why are the Digital Humanities So White? Or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation,” Debates in the Digital Humanities, Matthew K. Gold, ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012: 142.

[Rooney 2006] Rooney, E. “Introduction” The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006: 1-10.

[Rowe-Finkbeiner 2004] Rowe-Finkbeiner, K. The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy (Seal Press 2004).

[Rosser 2005] Rosser, S. “Through the Lenses of Feminist Theory: Focus on Women and Information Technology.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 26.1 (2005): pp. 1-23.

[Skloot 2011] Skloot, R. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Publishing (2011).

[Smith 2007] Smith, M. N. “The Human Touch, Software of the Highest Order: Revisiting Editing as Interpretation” Textual Cultures, 2.1 (2007): pp. 1-15.

[Steedman 2002] Steedman, C. Dust: The Archive and Cultural History New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press (2002).

[Travitsky and Prescott 2009] Travitsky, B. S. and A. L. Prescott. “Studying and Editing Early Modern Englishwomen: Then and Now” in (Ed) A. Hollinshead Hurley and C. Goodblatt, Women Editing/Editing Women: Early Modern Women Writers and the New Textualism, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2009): pp. 1-17.

[Wajcman 1991] Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technology. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press (1991).

[Wajcman 2010] Wajcman, J. “Feminist Theories of Technology,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34 (2010): pp. 3143–152.

[WWP History] http://www.wwp.brown.edu/about/history/.

A short follow up to THATCamp Feminisms

The work of THATCamp Feminisms deserves much more writing than I have in me right now – I’d like to talk about the challenges we faced, from strange website issues, to hacked project pages, to missing people whose funding fell through as well as the amazing outcomes and insights – the power of the local and of the national, new apps to be built and communities to grow, and rich thoughts about the history of DH, its politics, and where we can go in the future.

But the baby has just gone to sleep and we will be up in the early morning to watch Matt/Papa run the LA Marathon. So a short aggregator post will have to do for now.

There have been several follow up posts

Now I’ll Blog it: Re: #tcfw (Alex Juhasz)

http://aljean.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/now-ill-blog-it-re-thfw/

THATCamp Feminisms Day 1 (Alicen Lewis)

http://geekitout.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/thatcamp-feminisms-day-1/

#tcfw: Precarity, Solidarity, and Pressure (Anne Cong-Huyen)

http://anitaconchita.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/tcfw-precarity-solidarity-pressure/

TCFW: Feminism – the right to say ‘no’ in all contexts

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/feminism-saying-no/

THATCamp Feminisms West Thoughts (Chandra Jenkins)

http://englishnerd.net/2013/03/19/thatcamp-feminisms-west-thoughts/

Notes from THATCamp Feminisms West (Mia Ridge)

http://openobjects.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/notes-from-thatcamp-feminisms-west-tcfw.html

Building a DH Feminist Network (Amanda Phillips)

http://uchumanitiesforum.org/2013/03/19/building-a-dh-feminist-network/#comments

Here are the Storify collections:

#tooFEW Storify

http://storify.com/crunkfeminists/toofew-twitterfeed-feminists-engage-wikipedia-3-1?utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&awesm=sfy.co_jGOB&utm_content=storify-pingback

THATCamp Feminisms South Storify

http://storify.com/moyazb/tcfso-tweets-tweets-from-thatcamp-feminisms-south?utm_source=t.co&utm_content=storify-pingback&awesm=sfy.co_jGQb&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_campaign=

The Collected TCFW

http://storify.com/jwernimo/the-collected-tcfw

There were a number of google docs created during the two days of THATCamp Feminisms West, all of which are in the notes stages. Feel free to edit into more refined prose or to expand on ideas so that these docs become helpful to others. Here are the ones of which I know:

Google Docs

DH 400 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-FMagbblT3JqFjBHxc0mosClan0aZeXabdnjKz-3hUQ/edit

Feminist Collaboration

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VfmrwGwXmQgqSuqxsbR1z9E6dHSancLv7owHkjg3inw/edit

Creating a Regional Hub (aka the DH Food Truck becomes Mindr)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CBjRI_xUlGwNAv8D9BgXXGg6d-EMycTlI-AgjO8E1N0/edit

Transform DH https://docs.google.com/document/d/15caTX2281lvG4J0EN9YwgN0pcsbpXeiUVj1m59N5J0Y/edit

My slideshare from Intro to DH:

Dh intro from jwernimo

Mentioned Sites

http://www.usefulfruit.com/pearnote/

http://doceri.com/

http://writeordie.com

http://writtenkitten.net/

https://noisebridge.net/

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/

http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc

“Free as in sexist?” Free culture and the gender gap (Joseph Reagle)

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4291/3381

~~ I suspect I’ve missed some things and that more will emerge as we all have some time to chew on the weekend’s topics. Please leave me a comment or send a tweet and I’ll keep adding.

Thanks to everyone for a rewarding set of convos – I’m aware of the work it took on each of our parts to make this happen and I’m grateful to all involved!

2 Comments

by jwernimont on March 16, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in #tooFEW, DH Tools, events, THATCamp

Posted by jwernimont on March 16, 2013

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/resourcesshort/

Learning about “notability” and thinking print dependence

I’m a new wikipedia editor. If I make it past the fourth day, I will have reached the status of “Established Editor” – apparently most people don’t make it that long. I feel a little bit like Atreyu approaching the Southern Oracle in The Neverending Story.

THEORACLE

I hope I don’t get zapped and I have a sense that there is something a bit mysterious about this test.

But a couple of things are currently tumbling around in my head about what I’ve learned thus far.

The first is just how conservative Wikipedia is as a knowledge structure. As a “tertiary” resource, an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is designed to depend on the printed word for its authority. If it isn’t in print, it’s going to be hard to have robust citations of the sort that Wikipedia demands. It’s not about truth, it’s about what can be cited.

Of course, there are problems here, especially as a group of us begin to tackle issues of inclusivity by improving or adding pages by and about women and people of color. These are often the very same groups whose histories, voices, and art have not made it into print. There the claim is often that it isn’t profitable, and the driving force of market forces is part of what the “free” space of Wikipedia is supposed to push against. Of course, we recognize that there is a lot that isn’t “free” about Wikipedia, but I had not recognized that as a “tertiary” structure, Wikipedia may reproduce many of the same market effects that we’ve long seen in print. While twitter this evening brought the notion of oral citation into the conversation, I know very little about it and will have to search further.

This issue of print dependence comes to a head in Wikipedia’s policy regarding “notablity” which is remarkably literal in privileging that which has been “noted” by means of being printed. It seems strange in our current context that what is “worthy of notice” remains so intricately tied to what has been printed. I’m sure someone has done some great work on this, but I’m just coming to it and I’m a bit flabbergasted. Given that the Wikipedia standard is to write for a global audience (a laudable goal in many ways), the bar is quite high for what can be argued to be “notable,” and I worry that the work of women, people of color, queer and trans people, and those of lower economic class fall right through the sieve. What’s worse, as the economics of print become even more untenable, the problem is going to get worse, not better.

While the Wikipedia folks seem to think this is not necessarily problem, noting that “If the subject has not been covered outside of Wikipedia, no amount of improvements to the Wikipedia content will suddenly make the subject notable,” I think we have a knowledge transmission structure that is worth spending a fair amount of time thinking about. This is a topic of much debate, I’m learning, which seems right to me. We should be taking an interest in how we build and disseminate knowledge.

Now this post was prompted by the suggestion that an ongoing twitter conversation could be more robust in comments, so bring on the comments. I hope they’ll teach this newbie more about a subject she could clearly get engrossed in.

7 Comments

by jwernimont on March 12, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in #tooFEW, #transformdh, Feminism, Wikipedia

Posted by jwernimont on March 12, 2013

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/notability/

Notes for #tooFEW Edit a thon

In preparation for Friday’s #tooFEW Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, I spent some time watching the great training session that Adrianne Wadewitz did for a Pitzer class taught by Alex Juhasz.

To help those who are coming to our local editing party and those who will be working virtually, I’ve written up a few rather lightweight notes. I really recommend watching the video in full – these notes are intended as reference for those who have already seen the session.

Beginning on the Wikipedia Homepage

Wikipedia has internal peer review processes that assess writing, research, structure; a great article review can lead to showcasing as “Featured Article.”

“Did you know” articles are newly created articles, which are refreshed every couple of hours.

Before you begin editing

Adrianne noted that it’s important to recognize that it’s not just people within our own community reading the articles; Wikipedia has a world-wide audience. Editors need to think about your audience in a very broad sense. For example – the world largely takes evolution as uncontroversial, so the article is not dominated by the largely US debate on evolution. Need to get a sense of the global perspective before you write.

Most people don’t stick around to be editors – an “Established editor” is someone who has been editing for 4 days – people don’t stick around more than four days because it’s hard. The upside of this is that if you have the tenacity to do the work and do it well, then you’ll quickly be an established editor!

Everyone who edits is a volunteer – including the “Recent Changes Trolls” – they get badges and levels for finding things that are wrong.

Recent changes page – demonstrates how much change is going on at any given moment

Wikipedia editors need to screen through all of this; vandalism is super common so there are scripts that identify the vandalism. If you’re coming just from an IP address, it looks like you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re logged in, you can explain what it is that you’re doing, which helps the editors parse entry.

Sources

What counts as a good source – a secondary source! You can’t make the claim yourself; you can’t cite someone’s personal blog page. You need other people publishing on the topic/person. Among the kinds of things that can work: secondary books, published media accounts (beware the press release for promotional material), book reviews, biographies or published profiles.

Thinking about the structure of your post

Summary: most people never read past this part, so work hard on this section.

Article Contents: set of sections with hyperlinks in TOC

Basic rules: Wikipedia “Five Pillars”

Wikipedia is a “tertiary” source (as opposed to first or secondary sources) “summarizes secondary sources,” which means that in a way it is “very conservative” in the sense that it only publishes what has already been published: “verifiability not truth.”

Encyclopedia publishes already published knowledge – not truth per se.

If you argue, it’s about what the scholars have said – what the sources say.

W is written from a “neutral point of view” – derives its pov from the sources. You cannot use own personal experience, opinion, or perspective. You can only cite published material.

W is free – anyone can edit, use, modify. Therefore any information that you post is available for free use. Creative commons share and share alike license. What you are writing will appear on other sites as well.

W editors should interact with each other in a respectful and civil manner. Remember, however, that it is still an internet community. It is 90% male, mostly 20-30’s and mostly white. Can be very aggressive and argumentative. Adrianne recommends not using your legal name as login, which is partially about not having all of this content appear in a google search for you.

W –beyond that, there are no firm rules. You cannot break Wikipedia. All edits are saved. Feel emboldened.

Getting started

To start, login and then go to your sandbox – a space where you can play around and generate text; like a draft area. If you’d like to generate text, you can go to www.lipsum.com for dummy text.

Practice writing summary, saving, creating section headers (use equal sign = on both sides to make something a header, different numbers of signs surrounding gives you different sizes of headers). A TOC is automatically created if you have 4 + sections.

Use “show preview” to see how your page looks before publishing and use “edit summary” to narrate the kinds of changes that you’ve made.

Versions are saved, so you can go back in time and you can restore.

Error messages will tell you the nature of the error and will tell you how to fix the error – don’t fear the error message!

Helpful How To Tips

To create a section use equal sign = on either side, different number of = gives different weight to section header
To create bulleted list: use asterisk * in front of each item in list
To create a numbered list: use pound sign # in front of each item in list – will automatically generate numbers for your list based on order
To add links:
- For internal link use 2 [[on each side]] of what you want to link – very important to check the link to ensure that it works
- For external links use single brackets on either side. You can also use the wisiwig editor to insert link.
- You can always click on “Help” button if you forget editing details
- How to add in a reference – put cursor in place and then hit “Reference” button. A new window will appear and you put in your citation there. Note that references will automatically renumber

2 Comments

by jwernimont on March 11, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in #tooFEW, events, Feminism

Posted by jwernimont on March 11, 2013

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/notes-for-toofew-edit-a-thon/

Creating a voice and a place with digital tools

The following post written by Beatriz Maldonado draws on her experiences in the “Creating Archives” course at Scripps College.

Unfamiliar Territory
When I began this course, I was pretty unfamiliar with online resources for archives, museums, or academic sites. In some ways I felt that I wasn’t “allowed” to go into that sphere, that I was not academically prepared to find, challenge, or really even use a broad variety of web resources. I certainly wasn’t aware that these (Omeka and Scalar) programs existed and were available to me. I don’t know that I can state it strongly enough – it wasn’t just an issue of not finding the resources; it was that I didn’t even know that the possibility for such things existed. I had to learn what it meant to find the sources, how they and their histories matter, and how I might participate in the making of such sources myself.

My feelings of anxiety were not just limited to official websites, they were there for social media too. We participated in the Day of Digital Archives using twitter and I was so nervous: I know they say that there aren’t stupid questions, but I worried that I was just going to ask stupid questions.

Gateway Technology
Our course included a set of readings on the history of archives and libraries and Prof. Wernimont asked us to post each week to our online course management system, Sakai, with responses to those readings. This was a really important technique for me – it was a way of transforming my internal voice into an external one – even though our class forum was a private online space, it was like a gateway to participating in the digital community.

Before the class, I was unlikely to think of posting online. It wasn’t that I didn’t have something worthwhile or interesting to say – I felt that I did – but I felt that I hadn’t yet received enough training for my voice to really count in an Internet community. I thought that my readers would specifically denounce me as false, attacking me for lack of credibility. By the end of the course, it had become clear to me that in fact, I have been preparing for this and I have the authority to make an argument that people will want to read.

A numbers crisis
Prof. Wernimont kept pointing us to the ways that archives are crafted by choices, that people decide what is important to keep and that those decisions affect the histories we can write. As I was working through the Denison collections, I came across minutes from meetings where people talked about increasing diversity, but these documents talked in terms of percentages, of numbers of people. Administrators were focused on increasing the number of students of color on the campus and that was it.

The more I read, the more I found myself seeing other people only as numbers as well. I felt myself wondering if this was how I was going to be written about in the future – as a number. I wanted to know why other histories weren’t here – histories of Café con Leche or the women before me who also had felt as though they didn’t quite fit in. There was almost no history of Latina women here at the college. I was very angry; I wanted to ditch the project, it’s hard to be passionate about a project when you feel no connection and I didn’t see a way for me to feel connected. I wondered how I was ever going to feel connected to my college – at home here – when I couldn’t find a way to connect to its history.

Connection
But I did not lose hope; I had a strong desire to make a statement. After all, I wanted my project to mean and say something powerful. I kept digging, searching for the record of something meaningful for me. When I came across the Alexander Protests in the Student Unrest Archives, I was set. I kept thinking to myself, “in the year that I was born, students were fighting to preserve and maintain a college major that I am currently following now” (American Studies). At that moment I felt the responsibility to carefully voice the protests in the best way possible. With that responsibility I began to feel more comfortable in accepting that challenge I had feared for so long.

With passion, a student has the ability to create a great deal of change. Not just change in the world, but change for one’s self. As I created the Scalar book, I was writing a history of cultural diversity at the Claremont Colleges and a place for myself as a Latina. The book, authored in Scalar and titled Honk for Diversity, uses archival material to recount the week of the Alexander Protests where countless students and faculty of the Claremont Colleges united to fight for more cultural diversity within the Colleges (you can also check out the other student archives at the Creating Archives site)

Going Public
I never mentioned it to my professor, but I was afraid to give her permission to “make my Scalar book public.” I was afraid that by making it possible to see my book, I was also giving people permission to criticize it. Of course, I understand that criticism serves as a way to improve, but also functions as a way to create doubt – in the argument, in my ability to express an idea.

But I knew that it all had to begin from somewhere. If I kept feeding my fear of not exposing certain information because of outside rejection, what I discovered in the archive would remain unknown. Instead of challenging ideals, I would simply be conforming to them. I think, above all, this experience helped to strengthen my confidence.

Not only did I learn new information, but I was also able to present it in such a way that it became accessible to the rest of the world. I also learned that feeling at home in college is not about choosing an already existing path – I previously had wondered why I couldn’t just “click” on a path here at Scripps – instead, in order to feel at home at Scripps, I had to create a path for myself, my own option to “click.” I too had to become part of the cycle of opening the gateways to knowledge and make a place for myself.

Now I know that I hold the power, I hold the agency, I hold the voice.

Coda: Prof Wernimont’s Thoughts
I’m not going to add a whole lot here, as I think Bea’s story deserves to stand on its own. I do want to say, however, that her story and her experience still gives me goosebumps because of what it says about the power of both primary research and digital technology to intervene in the effects of race, class, and gender. At a time where many faculty think of students like Bea as “digital natives,” I am struck by her story’s demonstration of how challenging the public spaces of the Internet can be and how powerful it is to find one’s voice. Bea’s experience working with the archival material and digital authoring/publishing tools was challenging, sometimes painful, and, finally, empowering. I hope that her willingness to share her experiences will help illuminate one way in which our sometimes abstract discussions about race, class, gender, and sexuality vis-à-vis the digital humanities have real impact in the lives of our students.

2 Comments

by jwernimont on March 8, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in #transformdh, archives, class, DH Tools, Feminism, gender, pedagogy, race

Posted by jwernimont on March 8, 2013

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/creating/

#tooFEW Feminists Engage Wikipedia

Like Moya Bailey, I am really looking forward to our THATCamp Feminisms (TCF) kick off event. TCF is a national event happening in local spaces. Part of our local/national effort is a collaborative event called Feminists Engage Wikipedia.

Women and men around the country (heck, it could be the world) are invited to sign into Wikipedia, edit targeted entries and add new ones to help improve and increase the quality of the content on Wikipedia. The work that we will be doing is characterized by feminist and queer-friendly principles, which might take a number of different instantiations.

We will be working in person (at Honnold-Mudd Library in Claremont) from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. EST. We are encouraging all THATCamp attendees to join us and we welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us virtually.

Here are some of the ways that you can get involved:

Help generate ideas for new entries or entries to be improved – you can add your ideas to our working list here

Participate in wikipedia community
Sign up for a wikipedia account (consider using a pseudonym at the outset, you can always change it once you’re comfortable)

Watch this video to learn just how to edit wikipedia. Be sure to set aside some time for this video, it’s an hour long, and I recommend clicking on FLASH – it tends to play better that way.

Join us virtually by doing your work during our edit-a-thon, tweet to let us know you’re out there using the hashtag #tooFEW

Join us in person in Claremont: 2nd Floor of Honnold-Mudd Library - follow the signs – 8 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Tell Somebody (quoting Moya’s great ideas here)
Students – Do they need extra credit? Can this be a class project? Are you learning about some really cool people in POC/Trans*/Queer/Women’s History that don’t have wiki pages or have pages with bad information? You can fix it!
Friends – Do you know other folks who should know about this? Please spread this information to activists you know, faculty, etc. Everyone is welcome!
Organizations – These edit-a-thons work best with lots of folks working on specific things. Do you know orgs like INCITE or SONG that know specific types of folks who should be added to wikipedia or projects folks should know about?

Too swamped to be able to edit yourself? Post your ideas as comments below, or send me an email and I’ll add it to the agenda.

Please spread the word far and wide!

5 Comments

by jwernimont on March 5, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in events, Feminism, Uncategorized

Posted by jwernimont on March 5, 2013

http://jwernimont.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/toofew/

THATCamp Feminisms @ Scripps College

I’m looking forward to our upcoming THATCamp Feminisms, hosted at Scripps College, March 15th and 16th. Normally I’d link to our site so that you could check out our planned workshops, suggest a session, or register. Unfortunately, the THATCamp sites have been hacked and are down. While I’m generally not prone to conspiracy theories – this is the second time that the THATCamp Feminisms sites have been down and I’m beginning to feel a bit like someone wants to stand in the way.

Happy to report that all THATCamp sites are back up and running. Visit THATCamp Feminisms West to register, suggest sessions, etc

For those who are new to the THATCamp phenomenon – these events are “The Humanities and Technology Camps.” Designed as “unconferences,” these events are more free form, collaborative, and production-oriented than traditional academic conferences. No papers being read from lecterns here. THATCamps are also either low-cost or free – THATCamp Feminisms West (the one here at Scripps) is FREE!! Thanks to the generosity of the Scripps College Office of the President, Scripps English Department, Intercollegiate Media Studies, Intercollegiate Science, Technology, and Society, and Scripps Gender and Women’s Studies. We also have support from MSN Research.

I am particularly excited about the coordinated national effort of THATCamp Feminisms, what began as a west coast event will now also be a southern (@Emory) and eastern (@Barnard) event. We are also going to be participating in an exciting national Wikipedia editing event on Friday morning from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. You can visit our wiki page for more information, or check out Moya Bailey’s great write up of the event. This is both a virtual and in-person event. Here at Scripps we’ll be working at the Honnold-Mudd library in the future CCDH space and we’ll be joined by the fabulous Adrianne Wadewitz, who has helped host other recent WikiStorm events.

We currently plan to host two workshops:

Mia Ridge’s “Data visualisations as gateway to programming,” in which participants will be thinking about how to structure data for use in software, learning basic programming concepts, and moving towards tinkering with scripts. This is a great workshop for humanists who want a friendly intro to the world of programming.

Miriam Posner’s “Building Online Exhibits with Omeka,” in which participants will learn how to use Omeka to develop exhibits for classroom, research, and project use.

If we have enough interest, I will also be hosting an “Intro to DH” workshop for those who are attending their first THATCamp or who are new to the Digital Humanities field; we’ll discuss the origins of DH, it’s many different instantiations, and develop a common vocabulary for use during the rest of the THATCamp.

As with all THATCamps, the sessions will be decided upon during a welcome event and will be designed to focus on productive and collaborative work (feel free to suggest sessions in the comments below). Want to set an agenda for transnational feminisms in DH? -great, write that up. Want to design a syllabus or assignment for a feminist DH course? Wonderful! Have the skills to work with a group to build a lightweight mobile app? Get it done!

While most of the planning is going smoothly, the malicious attack on the THATCamp sites means that we have to hack our work flow just a bit – so please, spread the word that this site is here as a temporary substitute and that questions are most welcome. I’m looking forward to seeing what collective feminist engagement will yield!

Jacqueline Wernimont

A Dear Colleague letter for breastfeeding moms

Feminist Dialogues on Technology: Pitzer MS 134

1) ORGANIZATIONAL STUFF

TCFW: Feminism – the right to say ‘no’ in all contexts

Feminisms and Technology, a bibliography in progress

A short follow up to THATCamp Feminisms

Learning about “notability” and thinking print dependence

Notes for #tooFEW Edit a thon

Creating a voice and a place with digital tools

#tooFEW Feminists Engage Wikipedia

THATCamp Feminisms @ Scripps College

Current Research

Grant Projects

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