Author: Kristin Ravel

It’s time for our “Material and Digital Rhetorics: Openings for Feminist Action” blog carnival to come to a close. Thank you so much to our contributors for your thoughtful work! And a huge thanks to the editors of this carnival: Lauren Brentnell, Brandee Easter, Carleigh Davis, and Lauren Garskie. In October when we shared our CFP on topics tied to feminist theory and practice, digital rhetoric, and new materialism, we had two goals in mind: (1) to better understand current feminist digital rhetoric concerns and (2) to consider what feminist new materialist perspectives offer to how we think about and…

It’s now been just over a month since the 2017 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference, and here at the DRC we are happy to present a glimpse at some of the wonderful presentations connected to digital and multimodal rhetorics. The theme for the conference this year, “Rhetorics, Right, (R)evolutions” included feminist work of academics, activists, and advocates who are committed to making strives toward social justice and equality. As you read, we encourage you to keep the conversations going by responding in the comments or tweeting us @SweetlandDRC. Also check out the archive of comments on Twitter by searching for #femrhet2017.

Within Composition and Rhetoric, feminist rhetoricians have investigated the intersection of technology and pursuits of social equality. Their research has focused on women-centered online spaces, harassment on social media, digital civic engagement, and the gendering of technologies. Such scholarship acknowledges, as Judy Wajcman describes in TechnoFeminism, that technology is always a sociomaterial product: “a seamless web or network combining artefacts, people, organizations, cultural meanings and knowledge” (106). Understanding technology as sociomaterial means also understanding that technology itself is never neutral, nor even good or evil, but rather is embedded in our changing social relationships. More recently feminist new materialists have…

The Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative is seeking reviewers for the Feminisms and Rhetorics 2017 Conference to pair with our upcoming blog carnival on Feminism and Digital Rhetoric. We are interested in conference reviews on digitality, multimodality, technology, materiality and the ways these themes intersect with feminist aims and research. If you would like to be a reviewer for a @FemRhetConf session, please visit our Google Form to either sign up for a keynote or session to review. Reviews can be composed in written text (500-1500 words) or in any other appropriate media as long as the information can be received…