Sessions

We will be updating this page on a regular basis to include materials, activities, and reflection exercises for each session. If you aren't able to join us for our sessions in real-time, feel free to follow along over here!

Discussion sessions will be held on Thursdays at 1 pm ET. It is strongly encouraged that participants commit to attending all sessions. For more information on why, please read our FAQs.

March 11, 2021

Technology + Identity

In this first session, we will critically reflect on the multiple and intersectional identities we each hold and how our identities inform the ways we interact with technology, institutions, and power. Together we will build a solid foundation of how we define identity and technology for us to delve deeper into particular intersections in the following sessions.

📌Materials:

  • Belonging, adrienne maree brown (Text, less than 1 page)

What is belonging? How do we belong to ourselves? How could we show up in our collective discussion space (and perhaps in all spaces we are part of)?


Can we think of “televised” as a metaphor for technologized/digitized? What has changed in the last 50 years, what has not?


What does community technology create in reaction/resistance to? Where is power concentrated in community technology practices?


What does it actually take to create meaningful public spaces online? Can we use these principles in our individual use of the internet and online space as well?


~ Optional ~



📌Individual Reflection Prompt:

The Social Identity Wheel worksheet encourages you to identify facets of your identities and reflect on the ways those identities become visible or more keenly felt at different times. How do your identities impact the ways others perceive or treat you? This worksheet provides prompts to fill in various social identities and then categorize those identities based on which matters most in your self-perception and which matters most in others’ perception of you. The Social Identity Wheel is should be used in conjunction with the Personal Identity Wheel to reflect on the relationships and dissonances between your personal and social identities.

March 18, 2021

Technology + Gender

In Tech + Gender, we will analyze how technology perpetuates the gender binary and particularly harms those who hold marginalized gender identities. Articles, videos, and other media will be shared to help participants critically explore the role of technology in maintaining the social construction of gender and gender norms


📌Materials:


~Optional~



📌Individual Reflection Prompt:

  • Consult The Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies.

  • Choose 1-2 values, an object, and a situation card

  • Create a blueprint for a technology that:

            • is embodied in your Object

            • is guided by your Value(s)

            • and will help you solve the Situation presented to you by the Oracle.


~Tips~

        • You could use a digital drawing/collaging tool, take pictures, or even just use paper and a pencil - whichever speaks most to you!

        • You could also use this Blueprint sheet as a template!

        • Look through the "Images from the Future" section of the website for inspiration!


📌Pair + Share Reflection Prompts:

  • Read about the Gender Unicorn (and maybe even fill out your own!)

  • Share your reflections and learnings from the Gender Unicorn with your partner.

  • Is your gender identity prominent in your use of technology? Does it vary based on the type of technology being used?

  • What is the distinction between “feminist” technology, and gender liberation in technology? Is it possible to achieve liberation while working within systems of patriarchy and cis-heteronormativity?


📌Collective Discussion Links:

~Links~


March 25, 2021

Technology + Race

In Tech + Race, we will center the voices and scholarship of people of color as we continue to reflect on the intersectional natures of the internet and technology. We will discuss algorithmic oppression, digital abolition, and data healing as we imagine how racial identities are marginalized or uplifted in our daily technology practices.

📌Materials:


~ Optional ~


📌Individual Reflection Prompt:

  • Some journaling prompts:

          1. When has technology made you aware of your race (and not necessarily racism)? What did that feel like as an embodied experience?

          2. Describe a time you have shown racial bias through your use of technology. Was it a conscious choice? Was it a positive bias? What are the assumptions you hold that led to that action/bias/thought?


📌Pair + Share Reflection Prompts:

  • Browse through this Data Healing arena together and talk through what sticks out to each of you.

  • How have you been taking care of yourself online during the pandemic? Are there digital doula practices that you can adopt, share with your loved ones?

  • What does mutual aid online or in cyber space look like?

  • What could reparations online or through technological means look like?


📌Collective Discussion Links:

April 8, 2021

Technology + Indigeneity

In Tech + Indigeneity, we will interrogate forms of digital and neo-colonialism, as we learn in solidarity with Indigenous ways of knowing and building technology. Topics like data sovereignty, Indigenous Cyber-relationality, and #LandBack in cyberspace will be crucial elements of this conversation.

📌Materials:


~Optional~


📌Individual Reflection Prompt:

Some journal prompts on Ancestral Specificity (from @takebacktheinternet)

  1. Who are your ancestors?

Your ancestors are the people in your lineage (blood/creative). Where did they come from? How did they live?

  1. What legacy did they leave you?

A legacy is the sum of one’s actions. What did your ancestors do or overcome?

  1. What work does this legacy call for you to do?

You are a future ancestor. What legacy are you leaving behind?


📌Pair + Share Reflection Prompts:

  1. Share more about the Native land you each are on, and the Indigenous Peoples who have taken care of it, and continue to take care of it today. How are you learning more about them? How are you each supporting their efforts to regain sovereignty? What can you learn from each other in terms of showing solidarity and co-conspiracy?

  2. What knowledge/frameworks have you inherited in terms of visioning the future. Is there a certain image that jumps out immediately? Whose futures lives in your subconscious? Whose futures are you actively building towards?


📌Collective Discussion Links:


Guest Facilitators: Tristan Sam, President of the Georgetown University Native American Student Council, and Professor Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner


~ Links~


April 15, 2021

Technology + Disability

In Tech + Disability, we will reflect on how disability is constructed in technology, while thinking critically about the changes necessary to build more inclusive technological spaces. We will discuss how we can practice accessibility and welcome neurodivergence in our own tech practices and as we produce work that builds into larger systems of power.

📌Materials:



~Optional~


📌Individual Journal Prompt:

      • Do you currently identify as disabled? Have you experienced access issues? If so, how does it affect the way you move through space? How does it affect how you perceive yourself and others?


📌Pair + Share Reflection Prompts:

      • Do you participate in a space that could be inaccessible?

      • How do you contribute to upholding ableist structures?


📌Collective Discussion Links:

~Links~


April 22, 2021

Technology + Liberation

In our final session, we will have the opportunity to weave together learnings from the previous sessions, and pull them in with aspects of our pluralistic identities that we may not have touched on so far: Class, Labor, Immigration, Language. What does it mean to create the technological infrastructure that is liberatory for all? How can we inhabit technology with love? What can each of us do to ensure more of us belong, online and offline?

📌Materials:



~Optional~


📌Individual Journal Prompt:

      • Find a piece of art (a song, a poem, a painting, a physical artifact, a tweet, maybe even a Tiktok) that reinvigorates you, that inspires you to keep loving and dreaming, perhaps something that reminds you of a home, that reminds you of how/where/to whom you belong, and that brings joy when the world is overwhelming and chaotic. We will spend some time in breakout rooms on Thursday sharing these with each other.


📌Pair + Share Reflection Prompts:

      • Take some time this week to revisit our previous themes and how they might intersect with each other. Are there threads you see that pull through each of our sessions? Are there points of conflict that are worth working through?

      • As we come to the end of this, what are the takeaways you are each leaving with and how do you plan to leverage them in your lives/relationships/work moving forward?