The relationship between gender, feminism, and technology has long been fraught, in theory, narrative, and lived experience. For feminists, technology has been seen as a crushing war machine, a liberating domestic appliance, a site of bullying and support—a way to an egalitarian, utopian future or uniquely able to entrench and augment disparity. Feminist scholars have also introduced the idea that gender is itself a sort of technology, constructed and reproduced by relationships and social institutions. This course will serve as a platform for defining terms of the debate, exploring how gender and technology are deployed in novels, films, and various media platforms, and understanding feminist analyses of them. The course will be taught online and make space for reflective discussion of that virtual, mediated experience and how it interacts with the course material and experience.

This course will be a pilot in FemTechNet’s Distributed Online Course Content (DOCC) model. The DOCC is being proposed as an alternative model to the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and will bring together a diverse group of feminist scholars from around the globe to engage in our own learning community as we work with students. Faculty in the learning community will work collaboratively to locate resources, share successes and challenges, and develop best practices for the DOCC model. While students will have the experience of building a small online community and having individual interaction with the instructor, they will also have the opportunity to access a larger community of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in similar courses. The class itself will include recorded mini lectures, asynchronous and “hangout” style discussion, as well as formal assignments.