Feminist Technoscience & Bodies, 10.0 credits

Course level

Description

This course explores different tools (terms) and lenses (theories) to use when talking about the body. I think of these as part of feminist technoscience studies – but that’s me. It is actually a pretty messy mix of different strands of academic work over the last 40 years… and some is even a little older.

The course is divided into 3 sections:

1. Making Knowledge

2. Making Bodies

3. Doing & Making Digital Knowledge

Sections 1 & 2 will be held as individual tutorials, where we discuss the readings, their traces in more modern discourses, and relevance to your work. Below are the themes and readings for these sections. For these, we will meet IRL at Tema, in Linköping.

Section 3 will be held in conjunction with a national graduate course on feminist technoscience and the digital, which will involve a two-day IRL meeting with other PhD students reading the same literature. These sessions will be held in Norrköping. Here is the information about that section: https://padlet.com/erickajohnson/feminist-technoscience-for-ai-doing-and-making-digital-knowl-nsqcv3f3vhaupez7

It is possible to take section 3 as a stand-alone course, for which 3 credits will be given.

My goal with this course is to get you to read and engage with work that isn’t super hip right now, but which has left traces in conversations that are happening in the field (which field???), today. To that end, for each of the seminars I’ve chosen some work that I have found robust – even if it seems a bit dusty – maybe cringy – now. Then I’ve tried to find some later work that engages with those strands of conversation. I want you to read the texts, tell me how you respond to them (I’m not expecting you to like all of this – much of it has been severely critique in the intervening years, which is the point of academic discussion), draw parallels or contrasts to other things you have read, and then during the tutorial, discuss something from your field which relates to or refutes an idea in the readings.

Some things to keep in mind: What do these studies use for methods? Materials? What is data? How is theory used? And what about citation practices? (suggestion: read “Our Values and Our Metrics for Holding Ourselves Accountable” in Data Feminism https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/)