Googling Intersectional Identities; Transcending the Binary through Binary Code

Knowledge is power, and today, the apex of knowledge production and dispersal is through the Internet. However, not all data is equally accessible. In the information age, accessibility of knowledge is deeply dependent on algorithmic methods of organization. There are too many articles, think pieces, videos, and databases for any one person to manually sort. […]

Read more
Complicating the Gaming Discourse

When it comes to issues of intersectionality in gaming, often the response is to only address the bare minimum in order to survive as a game, developer, or platform, then continue on. Unfortunately, when marginalized voices do speak, they often go unheard, or ignored. Given that the dominant faction of gaming communities in places like Twitch, […]

Read more
Race and Intersectionality in South Park

Race and Intersectionality in South Park By Hannah Bruder and Jake Leflein Overview South Park is an animated American television show that first aired in 1997. Trey Parker and Matt Stone created the show, and over the years, produced 20 seasons and 277 episodes in total. Taking place in South Park, Colorado, the show follows […]

Read more
Mechaphiles and Objectum Sexuality in “Strange Love: My Car is My Lover”

“My Car is My Lover”, part of the BBC documentary series Strange Love (the same series responsible for the objectum sexuality documentary, “Married to the Eiffel Tower”), takes a look at “mechaphilia.” The film describes mechaphiles as people who are sexually and romantically attracted to vehicles, not exclusive to cars (references to trucks, planes, and helicopters). The […]

Read more
Utopia: the (Unfortunate) Relative Impossibility of Bell Hook’s Love Ethic

While I do not aim to discourage, or diminish, the possibilities of Bell Hook’s proposition of “Living By a Love Ethic,” the distance and removal from reality that a theoretical perspective affords. The only issue I take with the argument is the relative impossibility of its success in actual society. Rhetorically, the “love ethic” resembles […]

Read more
Performing Disidentifications in Alexis Lothian’s “Queer Geek Methodologies”

Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies (at the University of Maryland, College Park), Alexis Lothian’s recent talk at the University of Michigan, “Queer Geek Methodologies: Social Justice Fandom as a Transformative Digital Humanities,” highlights several aspects of the non-normative modes of discourse found in internet fandom, such as the mixture of creative, artistic expression with legitimate television theory, that […]

Read more
Can Spivak’s Subaltern Speak in “Mala Mala”?

In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Spivak considers the issues of navigating the representation of marginalized identities within mainstream media when the marginalized individuals lack a platform to voice their own opinions. Although these representations in film and media often come from a desire to help, or understand, they ultimately act to speak over the voices of the actual […]

Read more
Spivak and Hijabi Representation

Recently, there was a movement at Rutgers University where several women created a video in which they wore hijabs for a day (they do not normally where hijabs) and recounted their experiences. The goal of the video was to shed light on what hijabis go through and face in terms of disadvantages and harassment on a […]

Read more
Analyzing Bell Hooks’ “Love Ethic”

The vagueness or malleability of the word love is both its strength and weakness as a political term for social progress. In Bell Hooks’ piece “Living by a Love Ethic” she argues for an interpretation of the word love that forgets associations with traditional dominant ideology notions of love in the family or between husband […]

Read more
Semiotics and Mother’s Day

Back in 2014, this commercial was aired in lieu of Mother’s Day. The concept for the ad was to hold fake interviews for participants, asking them if they were capable of completing certain tasks that were seemingly impossible, ie having 24 hour work days with no breaks, and then eventually revealing to them that they […]

Read more