Feminism and Surveillance

Catalog description

Living with surveillance has become a predictable feature of contemporary life. From work to school to online dating, surveillance shapes many facets of our daily behaviors and activities. What can feminist theory bring to questions of surveillance? How have feminist tactics been used to resist surveillance? And can surveillance ever be a form of feminist caregiving? In the first part of this course, we analyze different forms of feminist thinking, including Black feminism, indigenous feminism, crip feminism and more. From there, we turn to legal, political, cultural and activist case studies related to surveillance. Putting them together, we consider how feminist frameworks can help us to analyze practices and technologies of surveillance. This is an interdisciplinary course that brings together internet studies, queer theory, science and technology studies, human computing interaction, surveillance studies and cultural studies in order to understand the social and historical dimensions of feminism and surveillance.