Research Colloquium at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Surrey presents

Mary Bryson

Wednesday March 7, 2007 at 1:30 pm

Room 14-400, SFU Surrey Campus, 14th floor Central City Tower

Mary Bryson

Title: When Jill Jacks In - Queer Virtualities and the Politics of Mis/Recognition

Abstract:

Discourses concerning the potentially democratizing significance of the Internet as a cultural technology highlight mobility, play, and possibilities for a redistribution of rights of recognition, communality and knowledge in a significant public sphere. A discursive logic of mobilization and heterogeneity likewise organizes discussions of queer. This research counters and complicates decontextualized, celebratory accounts of queer subjects and cyberspace and envisages mediated acts and contexts of identification as precarious play. The author explores the significance of communicative media for queer women, with a particular focus on the negotiation of complex identifications, communities, social networks, and knowledge practices. Using a critical, sociocultural approach, the author makes illustrative use of 74 in-depth interviews conducted in diverse locations in two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Alberta.

Bio:

Dr. Mary Bryson, University of British Columbia Mary Bryson is Associate Professor and Director, Graduate Programs, ECPS, Faculty of Education, UBC. Her primary interest is in sociocultural scholarship concerning technology, equity, and pedagogically transgressive use of digital tools. She has numerous publications on theoretical treatments of gender and technology, queer theory, and equity in education, including _Radical Interventions_ (SUNY Press). In 2000, Bryson was a recipient of the Canadian Pioneer in New Technologies and Media award. Her SSHRC research, "Queer Women on the Net," is focused on new media, identity, and discursive emplotments of network formation, community and agency www.queerville.ca.