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February 26, 2004

Don\'t Miss Megan

My buddy Megan will be speaking at KMDI next thursday... be there... if you can. Thursday, March 4, 2004 Time: 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. EST Room BA1200 [1st floor] Bahen Centre for Information Technology University of Toronto 40 St. George St. The Body in Cyberculture Cyberculture discourse jokes that \""On the Internet, no one knows you\'re a dog,\"" and offers the hype as claimed in the classic MCI advertisement, \""There is no race/there is no sex/there is no infirmity.\"" What are the implications of the hypes and hopes that bodies can be transcended online? How are bodies represented and imagined in computer-mediated communication (CMC)? In this presentation, I argue that cyberculture has re-packaged Descartes\' dream of mind over body into the \""new digital Cartesianism.\"" I analyze images that represent the \""hypes\"" of bodies in online spaces, and the cyberculture writings that reflects the \""hopes\"" of a gender-queer utopia online. In contrast to these hypes and hopes, I outline the \""reality\"" of how bodies and identities are invoked in CMC, and how stereotyped conceptions of sexual orientation and gender are reinscribed in online communication practices. Megan Boler Associate Professor in Theory and Policy Studies at OISE/UT. She earned her Ph.D. at the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California Santa Cruz, and has relocated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research and graduate courses address cyberculture studies, media literacy, feminist theory, and philosophy of technology, with specific work in the area of the representation of bodies in CMC and space and place in digital consciousness. She has recently launched a multimedia site called Critical Media Literacy in Times of War (1) that engages users in close analysis of the contradictory narratives offered by contrasting international, domestic, mainstream and independent media regarding anti-war protests and civilian casualties during the United States? invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. (1) http://www.tandl.vt.edu/Foundations/mediaproject"

Posted by jason at February 26, 2004 04:03 PM