Did I mention I wrote a book?
An important grad school hack that I learned after grad school is that you can and should listen to authors talk about their books via book talks! I’m still angling for a Misogynoir Transformed C-SPAN appearance but in the interim, please enjoy this conversation I had with Lee Pierce of the New Books Network!
Also, while you listen, sign up for one of my forthcoming book talks! Would love to hear your questions during any Q&A.
Two in-person events were transformed into Zoom panels and they were wonderful! We also got to do one talk, our first book talk for #HashtagActivism.
The first was with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. I talked about Caster Semenya and the undue burden placed on Black women athletes when it comes to gender, sex, and sexuality.
Human beings have long called on science to define concepts of sex and gender and used them to characterize, classify, and divide. On Friday, March 13, the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a Women’s History Month event on Science, Sex, and Gender. Moderated by Harper Jean Tobin (National Center for Transgender Equality), a panel of experts explored the role of science in evolving and expanding notions of sex and gender in a discussion that centered the lived experiences of transgender and intersex women.
Panelists:
– Harper Jean Tobin, National Center for Transgender Equality (Moderator)
– Moya Bailey, Northeastern University
– Katie Dalke, Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute
– Tori Cooper, Human Rights Campaign
– Katrina Karkazis, Brooklyn College/Yale University
Science Sex and Gender: Women's History Month 2020 from The National Academies on Vimeo.
The second panel was part of the launch of the Center on Digital Culture and Society. I talked about the need for creating a digital culture that honors pace and the humans hidden in the digital supply chain.
Center on Digital Culture and Society Digital Launch Symposium
FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2020
TECHNOLOGY, RACE, + GENDER
Moderator: Sarah J. Jackson, University of Pennsylvania
Moya Bailey, Northeastern University
Kishonna Gray, University of Illinois at Chicago
Carrie A. Rentschler, McGill University
CDCS Digital Launch Symposium: Technology, Race, and Gender Panel from CDCS on Vimeo.
Excited this piece is out!
In this research, we examine the advocacy and community building of transgender women on Twitter through methods of network and discourse analysis and the theory of networked counterpublics. By highlighting the network structure and discursive meaning making of the #GirlsLikeUs network, we argue that the digital labor of trans women, especially trans women of color, represents the vanguard of struggles over self-definition. We find that trans women on Twitter, led by Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, and in response to histories of misrepresentation and ongoing marginalization and violence, deliberately curate an intersectional networked counterpublic that works to legitimize and support trans identities and advocate for trans autonomy in larger publics and counterpublics.
Read it here!
I’ve always loved building things. When I was a kid I used to have Dream Builders, which were essentially Legos for girls that were pastel pink and purple. I loved to build structures and pull them apart. As I recall, the sets steered you towards building “girly” structures like nurseries, and “playgrounds too, a building set made just for you…” Whoa! Jingles are marketing gold. Anyway, my early memories with these supposedly gender appropriate building blocks come back as I reflect on why DH gets me going. It’s in the building and making connections. I digress…
I’m happy to announce Dr. Stephanie Evans project “SWAG Diplomacy” a project built in Viewshare, a platform I taught her to use after I had the good fortune to learn about it at THATCamp CHNM. SWAG Diplomacy, as described by Dr. Evans, “maps locations of 200 African American autobiographers who wrote international travel memoirs.” You can click on a country and see all the famous African Americans who wrote about traveling there. You can click on a person and discover the places they traveled. You get a sense of the amazing places that Black folks have been and the cross pollination of cultures beyond the Diaspora.
Anyway, I’m excited that it’s up and ready to be explored. There’s nothing like working with a scholar and showing them there’s a way to get what they have in their head out into the world where others can access it. So proud to have been a part!
Tell your friends and check it out!
I’ve been in the (e)news again!
This time, it was a two part interview with Tara Conley of the fabulous Media Make Change Organization. You can check out parts 1 and 2 here.
Here’s a little bit of what I had to say about the Digital Humanities:
…I think that’s why Digital Humanities is a good model. That is, it isn’t necessarily compartmentalized. You have academics with disciplinary training, you have computer programmers, you have librarians, and so on. You have people from different sectors who are all bringing their knowledge to the table on a particular issue or a particular project. This means that each person has to know what they need to know, but at the same time, you’re creating something together. It’s the collaborative spirit of Digital Humanities that is something we should really embrace and try to bring to other parts of the university.
I’m excited for the exposure and hopefully it leads to some job opportunities (hint hint readers)!
I got to do an awesome interview with long time community friend and newly minted QWOC Wire Writer Tiffany Y. Ates about my involvement with Shawty Got Skillz!
Digital humanities dissident, Moya Bailey, has sculpted a yellow brick road in cyberspace for women of color. This summer she will travel to Detroit, along with her collective, Shawty Got Skills, to conduct a three-hour workshop at the 14th annual Allied Media Conference. As the ‘founder and co-conspirator’ of Quirky Black Girls, blogger for the Crunk Feminist Collective, and graduate student, it’s amazing she even had time to squeeze us in for an interview (virtual, of course). I asked Moya to share more about her skill share, their objectives, and her cosmic digital endeavors.
Geeked!
I had the good fortune to attend THATCamp CHNM last week and it was awesome!!!
After a day long English language nerd field trip, I arrived at THATCamp CHNM. The workshops offered were wonderful and I’m super confident about my Omeka and newly acquired Viewshare skills. I particularly enjoyed the mobile apps workshop which made something seemingly beyond my scope of learning, all the more accessible. Thanks Mike!
I met some of the #transformdh folks in person for the first time and had the opportunity to geek out about blogging pedagogy with Mark Sample and others. We started a dichotomy for when/how to use class blogs that I hope folks will try to finish. It was inside that session that I realized what I like most about THATCamp is a call to create something in the moment and to fix a problem within our allotted hour and a half.
I really wanted that for the future of digital publishing session. There’s so much amazing work that people are creating that doesn’t “count” towards tenure and promotion in the current system. The question was posed, if we love doing the work does it matter if it doesn’t count? It seems people have different answers at different stages of their academic careers with tenured professors much more likely to take risks while grad students and junior faculty ask is this ok? The session left me wondering how a collective DH call to university administrators and departments could help shift current standards. I still wonder why some DH is visible as such and others is not. So much of what I see in af-am and other oppressed peoples studies tries to make work accessible/accountable to communities outside the academy which more often than not includes a digital component. How can THATCamps attract a more diverse academic audience from a wide range of humanities disciplinary backgrounds?
I’m super excited about the practice of THATCamps being connected to other conferences and I wonder if that might remain a strategy for engaging new communities of scholars. I’m already dreaming up a session proposal for my next THATCamp experience 🙂
My “conversation” in the inaugural Journal of Digital Humanities is live! Special thanks to Natalia Cecire for the invitation!
Following a fascinating talk by Ed Finn on the changing role and source of literary criticism in a digital age, Natalia Cecire queried the implicit neutrality of a term like “nerd.” Melissa Harris-Perry’s reclamation aside, the racialized and gendered aspects of nerddom, and by extension the digital humanities, offer opportunities for a more explicit engagement with positionalities that lead “white men to feel embattled.” How do those outside the categories white and male navigate this burgeoning disciplinary terrain?
My session idea for THATCampSE:
I’m really excited about the types of DH projects university folks are creating. I’m also curious about discussing more applied DH projects that meet community needs and serve people beyond university walls. Universities have notoriously contentious community relations and it seems like more intentional collaborative outreach could help. If communities were involved in DH, what kind of projects would be prioritized? I’d like to brainstorm ways to create community centered projects that not only advance academic goals, but help make our world a better place. What kind of SouthEast specific community based project can be dreamed up? All power to the people! 
I’m super geeked to be presenting at the Duke University Black Thought 2.0 Conference April 7 at 1: 30 pm. I’ll be repping the Crunk Feminist Collective and paneling with the wonder twin, Alexis Pauline Gumbs. They also have me listed as a Ph.D. which is simultaneously motivating and terrifying.
Conference organizers will be live streaming and tweeting the event as well.