Digital Feminisms: Theory and Activism Online

Does gender matter on the Internet? How does patriarchy, misogyny, and racism get coded into our digital tools? Is a feminist Internet possible? In this class we will investigate how feminist and sociological theory makes sense of the relationship between gender and power in our digital and technologically mediated world. We will apply these theories to understanding various digital pursuits, including online labor, bodily autonomy, and the design of social media platforms. Throughout we will discuss how feminism is put into practice by communities of technologists, designers, and data scientists. Students will complete a final zine analyzing a digital phenomenon of their choice.