[acc-cca-l] CFP: Digital Feminist Activisms

[Brianna I. Wiens]

Dear colleagues, 
We are seeking submissions for an edited collection on digital feminist
activisms. Please see the call below. 
CFP: Digital Feminist Activisms: The Performances and Practices of Online
Public Assemblies
(http://www.qcollaborative.com/2019/04/12/cfp-digital-feminist-activisms-the-performances-and-practices-of-online-public-assemblies/)
	Edited Collection

	Abstracts Due: May 30, 2019
	Editors: Dr. Shana MacDonald (University of Waterloo), Dr. Milena
Radzikowska (Mount Royal University), Dr. Michelle MacArthur (University of
Windsor), Brianna I. Wiens (York University)
	With the rise of what Jessalyn Keller and Maureen Ryan have called
“emergent feminism,” we are witnessing a moment marked by the “sudden
reappearance” of strident critiques of gendered inequalities within
popular discourse (2018, 2). More often than not, emergent feminisms are
amplified online through social media by popular feminism and celebrity
endorsements (Sarah Banet-Weiser 2018; Angela McRobbie 2008), which can
problematically promote neoliberal values of individual consumer practices
and competitive self-improvement as a forms of empowerment. And yet, access
to social media has produced important and critical forms of feminist
politics. In Notes Towards a Theory of Performative Assembly, Judith Butler
(2015) advances the importance of bodies assembling in space as a form of
protest that performatively asserts both “the right to appear” and
demands “a livable life” for those in positions of precarity. While
feminist visibility in the broader public eye has produced important
dialogues, this politics of assembly simultaneously begs the question:
“What about those who prefer not to appear, who engage in their
democratic activism in another way?” (Butler 2015, 55). There are many
valid and powerful reasons as to why feminist activists may want, or be
able, to not appear given the dangerous climate of online spaces, rife with
the violent misogyny of trolling culture. These forms of publicness and
erasure are equally important to consider within current considerations of
emergent feminist practices online.
	This book seeks to gather provocations, analyses, creative explorations,
and/or cases studies of digital feminist practices from a wide range of
disciplinary perspectives including, but not limited to, media studies,
communication studies, critical and cultural studies, gender and sexuality
studies, performance studies, digital humanities, feminist HCI, and
feminist STS. The book frames digital feminisms as forms of public assembly
that are performative and theatrical; that is, performative in that they
can offer, “a process, a praxis, an episteme, a mode of transmission, an
accomplishment, and a means of intervening in the world” (Diana Taylor
2003, 15), and theatrical in that they are events that may include
characters, plot, the invocation of an audience, and the collective labour
of multiple collaborators. In this way, digital feminist practices foster
counterpublics––communities that enable “exchanges...distinct from
authority” that “have a critical relation to power” (Michael Warner
2002, 56). This book seeks to consider how digital feminist activism uses
conventions of assembly, performativity, theatricality, and design to
counter the individualizing forces of postfeminist neoliberalism while
foregrounding the types of systemic change so greatly needed, but often
overlooked, in this climate.
	List of possible topics:
	* Feminist hashtag activism; feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, LGBTQ+
hashtag movements
	* Closed virtual feminist communities and safe(r) spaces
	* Feminist and post-feminist forms of digital culture
	* Intersectional feminism online
	* LGBTQ+ digital cultures
	* Black, indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) digital cultures
	* Transnational digital feminism
	* Popular and celebrity feminism online
	* Feminist responses to online misogyny
	* Feminism and post-feminism on Instagram and/or Twitter
	* Feminist, queer, and BIPOC meme
	* Feminist, queer, and BIPOC design
	* Gamergate and implications of online misogyny in game culture
	* Methodological and/or theoretical approaches to feminist digital culture
	Please submit a 250-350 word abstract, a brief author bio, and any
questions to Brianna I. Wiens (bwiens at yorku.ca (mailto:bwiens at yorku.ca)) by
May 30th, 2019. Accepted submissions should be 6000-7000 words and will be
due to the editors by November 1, 2019. 
	References

	Banet-Weiser, Sarah. 2018.  Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular
Misogyny. Duke University Press. 
	Butler, Judith. 2015. Notes Toward a Theory of Performative Assembly.
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press. 
	Keller, Jessalynn and Maureen E. Ryan (eds). 2018. Emergent Feminisms:
Complicating a Postfeminist Media Culture. Routledge. 
	McRobbie, Angela. 2008. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and
Social Change. Sage. 
	Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural
Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
	Warner, Michael. 2002. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture
14(1): 49-90.
--
Brianna I. Wiens, MA Rhetoric and CultureDoctoral Candidate, Communication
and Culture, York University Convenor, Intersectional Feminist Design
Research Lab | http://www.qcollaborative.com
(http://www.qcollaborative.com/) Pronouns: She/her @biwiens


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