...

"I didn't want to write a poem that said "blackness

is," because we know better than anyone
that we are not one or ten or ten thousand things
Not one poem" - Elizabeth Alexander 

from http://www.amazon.com/The-Venus-Hottentot-Elizabeth-Alexander/dp/1555973922

2014 NWSA Conference...

from http://thefeministwire.com/2014/07/nwsa-2014/

Thank you for joining us for this panel Technologies of Race and the Futurity of Desire: Feminisms, Gendered Narratives and Cyberspace. 

Social Media Connections
@damarishill 
@digifeminist 
@ayusaraswati  
@nwsa
@nwsa_ig Instagram 
@digifeminist  Instagram 
#NWSA2014

Exploration...

from http://suzanneevans.org/2014/03/google-this

Please use 'google images'  to search the following:

"women+beauty" 

"white+women+beauty"

"black+women+beauty"

Take a minute to also explore using a 'google search':

"white+women"

"black+women"

What are the differences in the results?  Please feel free to leave comments in the comments section on this page. 

This project is entitled Surfing for Saras: Black Women in Webbed Worlds.  This presentation surveyed the historical legacies associated with black women in media in context with information architecture in order to analyze the complexities of contextualizing Black women/femininities in digital spaces

Research Questions...

from http://www.polar-ray.com/kbase/LED_Lighting_Dimming_Guide/LED_Lighting_-_Dimming_Guide.html

“Search is one of the most under-examined aspects of power and consumer protections online, and regulation in the provision of information to the public through the Internet. I contend that there is value in expanding the discourse about search engine results by examining its intersecting racial and gendered bias. By taking a deep look at a snapshot of the web, at a specific moment in time and interpreting the results against the history of race in U.S. society, there is an opportunity to make visible processes that are biased in their impact, but obscured through the rhetoric of technology’s neutrality and popular acceptance in being merely a tool for human use.”  Safiya Umoja Noble, Google Search: Hyper-visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Black Girls Invisible 

We know that physical environments (communities, institutional spaces and ect) can inspire complex negotiations regarding the politics of physical appearances for black women. Often the complexities associated with these negotiations are rooted in historical references and dominant narratives.  My research questions ask: 

• How do black women negotiate the politics of physical appearances in digital environments?
• How can the concept of information architecture help us determine the 'beauty standards'  and expectations regarding the politics of physical appearances for black women?
• How does the concept of information architecture and popular images of black women in digital environments inform the ways that black women negotiate individual identities?  Do these expectations or the negotiations tell us anything about black women's lives?