Course Description:

Black Feminist Futures: Intro to Black Feminist Digital Humanities seeks to create a vibrant community of thinkers to explore the relationship between technology in the 21st century and Black feminist thought. This study will survey critical internet studies topics, such as cyber harassment, algorithmic bias, influencer culture, and digital organizing from a Black feminist perspective. Some of the core exploratory questions for this class include: What are the digital humanities, and how can we apply them to our studies of the humanities and social sciences, as well as science, technology, education, health care, and law and public policy? How have Black feminist scholars applied and complicated digital humanities principles to their research, and what skills and methods can we use to incorporate into a variety of careers (including local and national politics, tech, museum and library positions, health care administration, etc)? This course aims to introduce students from a variety of academic backgrounds to Black feminist ethics, interdisciplinary applications of Digital Humanities praxes, and Black feminist strategies for studying digital research projects. Throughout this course, students will develop critical research and writing skills about technology, online communication, and digital scholarship.

Learning Objectives:

Core Course Questions:

Reading Outline:

Week:	Theme/Concept:	Readings:	Supplemental Resources:
Week One	Black Feminism (primer readings)	Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color." Stan. L. Rev. 43 (1990): 12-41.

Collective, Combahee River. "The Combahee river collective statement." Home girls: A Black feminist anthology 1 (1983): 264-274. | “You May Have Borrowed These Terms From Black Feminism”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/you-may-have-borrowed-these-renegade-terms-from-black-feminism-180980592/ | | Week Two | Intro to Digital Humanities (primer readings) | Bailey, Moya Z. “All the Digital Humanists Are White, All the Nerds Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave.” Journal of Digital Humanities 1, no. 1 (2011).

Keeling, Kara. “Queer OS." Cinema Journal 53, no. 2 (2014): 152-157. | | | Week Three | Archiving Black + Feminist Cyberculture | Brock, André. “Introduction" and "1. Distributing Blackness: Ayo Technology! Texts, Identities, and Blackness" In Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures, 1-37. New York, USA: New York University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479820375.003.0001 | | | Week Four | Black Cyberfeminism & Digital Black Feminism | Steele, Catherine Knight. “Introduction” and “Black Feminist Technoculture, or the Virtual Beauty Shop” in Digital Black Feminism. In Digital Black Feminism. New York University Press, 2021. | | | Week Five | Assembling a Black Feminist Digital Self | Johnson, Jessica Marie, and Kismet Nuñez. "Alter egos and infinite literacies, Part III: How to build a real gyrl in 3 easy steps." The Black Scholar 45, no. 4 (2015): 47-61.

Chatelain, Marcia. "Is Twitter Any Place for a [Black Academic] Lady?." Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities (2019): 172-84. | Sonya Renee Taylor “Bodies As Resistance” TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWI9AZkuPVg | | Week Six (Student’s Choice) | Racism & Sexism in Tech | Noble, Safiya Umoja. "Google search: Hyper-visibility as a means of rendering black women and girls invisible." InVisible Culture 19 (2013).

Browne, Simone. “What Did TSA Find in Solange’s Fro?: Security Theater at the Airport” in Dark matters: On the surveillance of blackness. Duke University Press, 2015. | | | Week Six (OR/Student’s Choice) | Black Privacy & Surveillance Studies | Smith, Christen A. "Impossible Privacy: Black Women and Police Terror." The Black Scholar 51, no. 1 (2021): 20-29.

Sharpe, Christina. “The Ship: The Trans*Atlantic” in In the wake: On blackness and being. Duke University Press, 2016. | | | Week Seven (OR/Student’s Choice) | Misogynoir + The Politics of Citation | Bailey, Moya, and Trudy. "On misogynoir: Citation, erasure, and plagiarism." Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 4 (2018): 762-768.

Smith, Christen A., Erica L. Williams, Imani A. Wadud, Whitney NL Pirtle, and Cite Black Women Collective. "Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement)." Feminist anthropology 2, no. 1 (2021): 10-17. | | | Week Seven (OR/Student’s Choice) | Hashtag Activism | Jackson, Sarah J., Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles. “#GirlsLiveUs: Transfeminist advocacy and Community building” in #HashtagActivism: Networks of race and gender justice. MIT Press, 2020.

Conley, Tara L. "Decoding black feminist hashtags as becoming." The Black Scholar 47, no. 3 (2017): 22-32. | | | Week Eight (OR/Student’s Choice) | Influencer Culture, Beauty, & Politics of Visibility | Schalk, Sami. "Contextualizing Black Disability and the Culture of Dissemblance." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45, no. 3 (2020): 535-540.

Hobson, J. Black Beauty and Digital Spaces: The New Visibility Politics. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 10. (2016) | Cottom, Tressie McMillan. “In The Name of Beauty” in Thick: And other essays. The New Press, 2018. | | Week Eight (OR/Student’s Choice) | Cancel Culture and Ethics of Harm | D. Clark, Meredith. “DRAG THEM: A Brief Etymology of so-Called ‘Cancel Culture.’” Communication and the Public 5, no. 3–4 (September 2020): 88–92.

Kim, Dorothy. “Digital Humanities, Intersectionality, and the Ethics of Harm” in Intersectionality in Digital Humanities , edited by Barbara Bordalejo and Roopika Risam, 45–58. Amsterdam University Press. (2019) | | | Week Nine (OR/Student’s Choice) | Black Girls Online: On Black Girls Who Code & Game | Wade, Ashleigh. "When social media yields more than “likes”: Black girls’ digital kinship formations." Women, Gender, and Families of Color 7, no. 1 (2019): 80-97.

Russworm, TreaAndrea M., and Samantha Blackmon. "Replaying video game history as a mixtape of Black feminist thought." Feminist Media Histories 6, no. 1 (2020): 93-118. | | | Week Nine (OR/Student’s Choice) | Sonic Cyberfeminism & Hip Hop Activism | Yates-Richard, Meina. “‘Hell You Talmbout’: Janelle Monáe’s Black Cyberfeminist Sonic Aesthetics.” Feminist Review 127, no. 1 (March 2021): 35–51.

Bland, Dorothy M., and Marquita S. Smith. "Stirring up “Good Trouble:” Black songs of protest and activism in 21st century US." Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe. Volume 2. (2022): 1. | | | Week Ten (OR/Student’s Choice) | Diasporic Black Digital Feminisms (Caribbean) | Sierra-Rivera, Judith. 2018. “Afro-Cuban Cyberfeminism: Love/Sexual Revolution in Sandra Álvarez Ramírez’s Blogging.” Latin American Research Review 53 (2). Cambridge University Press: 330–43.

Stephens, Miari Taina. "Black Feminist Organizing and Caribbean Cyberfeminisms in Puerto Rico" Open Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2022): 147-166. | | | Week Ten (OR/Student’s Choice) | Diasporic Black Digital Feminisms (Central/South America) | Matos, Carolina. "New Brazilian feminisms and online networks: Cyberfeminism, protest and the female ‘Arab Spring’." International Sociology 32, no. 3 (2017): 417-434.

Loureiro, Gabriela Silva. "To be black, queer and radical: Centring the epistemology of Marielle Franco." Open Cultural Studies 4, no. 1 (2020): 50-58. | | | Week Eleven (OR/Student’s Choice) | Diasporic Black Digital Feminism (Europe) | Amponsah, Emma-Lee. "Black woman in and beyond Belgian mainstream media: between opinion–making, dissidence, and marronage." Feminist Media Studies 21, no. 8 (2021): 1285-1301.

Sobande, F. (2020). Why the Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain?. In: The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain. Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. | Menopause Whilst Black Episode (W/ Omisade Burney Scott): https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/shape-shifting-rona-boobies-us-elections-during-global/id1537012198?i=1000497864688 | | Week Eleven (OR/Student’s Choice) | Diasporic Black Digital Feminism (Africa) | Iyer, Neema. "Alternate realities, alternate internets: African feminist research for a feminist internet." In The Palgrave Handbook of Gendered Violence and Technology, pp. 93-113. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021.

Datiri, B. (2020). Online Activism Against Gender-Based Violence: How African Feminism is Using Twitter for Progress. Debats. Journal on Culture, Power and Society, 5, 271-286. DOI: http://doi.org/10.28939/iam.debats-en.2020-16 | | | Week Twelve | Black Feminist Futures | Cooper, Brittney C. "Love no limit: Towards a Black feminist future (in theory)." The Black Scholar 45, no. 4 (2015): 7-21.

Cárdenas, M. (2015) Shifting Futures: Digital Trans of Color Praxis. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No.6. doi:10.7264/N3WH2N8D | |

Assignment Descriptions:

Educators’ Addendum & Additional Resources:

This syllabus was created with the support of a 2022 Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon) teaching fellowship [plain text: http://digitalethnicfutures.org/]. Because I know it will be open source, I am adding a few resources and additional information for folx looking to add or supplement their own knowledge and/or course offerings on Black Feminist Digital Humanities.

Keeping Up with Black Feminist Digital Humanities Literature:

I created a Research Rabbit collection titled “Black Feminist Digital Humanities” and a linked Zotero group titled “BlkFemDH”, in combination with this syllabus, so that folx can read previously published as well as emerging literature on Black Feminist Digital Humanities concepts, methodologies, and pedagogies. Research Rabbit is an AI-driven database for researchers, and it was helpful for me because I am a visual researcher who finds it useful to sometimes see ideas, people, and dates in clusters or mind maps. It was also important for me, as an educator/researcher/information gatherer, to make it clear that: 1) a syllabus is a time bound snapshot of the field; 2) there are a plethora of readings that can and have been obscured by search engines and algorithms; and 3) what doesn’t make it on the syllabus is just as enriching and important as what does.

To access the “Black Feminist Digital Humanities” Research Rabbit Collection:
To Access and subscribe to the Zotero group:
To Access My BookShop.ORG List of Recommended Books on Black Feminist Digital Humanities:
Additional Examples of search Terms for Future Reading: