Digital Black Feminism at the Black Research Network

CDHI and the Black Research Network are pleased to host Dr. Catherine Knight Steele (Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland-College Park and Director of the Black Communication and Technology Lab) at our Visiting Speaker Series.

Dr. Knight Steele’s talk is titled “Digital Black Feminism: Toward a Black Feminist Technoculture”

Black women are at the forefront of some of this century’s most important discussions about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and influencer culture. But Black women’s relationship with technology began long before the advent of Twitter or Instagram. To truly “listen to Black women,” we turn our gaze to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the U.S. to decenter white supremacy and patriarchy in the future of technology. In this talk, Catherine Knight Steele places Black women at the center of a discussion about technology, using the virtual beauty shop as a metaphor and mechanism to interrogate a Black feminist technoculture wherein we no longer treat Black women’s use and manipulation of digital technologies as deviant, deficient, or an aberration. Steele considers how Black women’s specific institutional and social oppression—which began long before the advent of digital technology—has resulted in their continued strength with communication technology.

This event is co-sponsored by the Black Research Network: https://brn.utoronto.ca/

RSVP here.