WOMN2205

SELF.NET: IDENTITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Offered: SEMESTER 2, 2010 (and every alternate year)

What happens to bodies, identities and the ‘self’ in cyberspace? This unit is an excursion into the communicative environments of the digital age to examine their impact upon identity, with particular emphasis upon gender, sexualities, race and class. Engaging students in study of contemporary theory and practice relating to identity and difference, the unit considers a number of central issues: the relationships between the social and cultural meanings of gender relations on- and offline; the performativity of gender, sexualities and difference in cyberspace communities; constructing the self in the digital world and the politics of online representation; regulation of the spheres of domestic space and cyberspace; youth, gender and cybercultures; and the implications of ‘life on the screen’ for understandings of the sexed and gendered ‘techno-body’ of the twenty-first century.

The unit is interdisciplinary, drawing on scholarship from gender, cultural, and Internet studies. It is organised into four modules which combine lectures and tutorials with a sequence of guided online workshops designed to deepen engagement with scholarly perspectives in fields such as Internet Relay Chat and practices such as blogging (although the unit assumes no prior online experience).

TEXTS
Unit Reader (available at the Coop Bookshop)

ASSESSMENT
Tutorial participation and weblog 30%
Critical exercise 20%
Research essay 50%

Handbook link