Black feminist and digital media studies in Britain

Abstract

Based on an in-depth discussion between us (six Black PhD and early career researchers), this work explores burgeoning Black feminist and digital media studies in Britain. Our article is rooted in dialogue about Black feminist digital culture, communications, aesthetics, joy, and our different yet interconnected scholarly experiences. We consider who and what shapes the work that we do, the way we approach it, and how it has developed in recent years. Specifically, our thoughts relate to five expansive and interlinked themes: 1. Digital Blackness, Twitter, and Community-Building, 2. Aesthetics, Archives, and Knowledge Production, 3. Pressures, Projections, and Power Dynamics, 4. Research on/as Black Feminist Joy and Pleasure, 5. The Politics of Research. By reflecting on our research and encounters in academia we provide an overview of key aspects of Black feminist and digital media studies in Britain, including how such scholarship is impacted by the specifics of where we are (and have been) located. In doing so, we share insights at the nexus of Black studies, digital studies, cultural studies, and feminist media studies that foreground possibilities, problems, playfulness, and pleasure that can be part of doing Black feminist and digital media studies work in Britain. KEYWORDSBlack feminism; black joy; black media; black pleasure; black twitter; Britain detract from its generatively unstructured and informal nature. Therefore, rather than embedding excerpts from our dialogue in a wider theoretical analysis, we chose to make the discussion transcript the core of our article. Five key themes encompass much of what we shared during our conversation, so these feature as the section headings that orient our piece: Twitter, and Community-Building, 2. Aesthetics, Archives, and Knowledge Production, 3. Pressures, Projections, and Power Dynamics, 4. Research on/as Black Feminist Joy and Pleasure, 5. The Politics of Research. Digital blackness, Twitter, and community-building Rianna Walcott (she/her): I'm Rianna, I'm at KCL (King's College London). I'm entering mylast year of PhD, the write-up, I guess, from September. I'm in the Digital Humanities Department at KCL, that I'm trying to make very Black. I write about social media and language, and how Black people portray identity online. It's like I remembered how to read at about 2am last night, when I was suddenly flicking through this big fucking pile of books I've got here. Yeah I'm quite excited, and I'm probably going to mine you all, indiscriminately, during this conversation for this piece I'm writing, so just be prepared for that, I guess. keisha bruce (they/she): I'm keisha and I'm currently completing a PhD in Black Studies and aim to finish early 2022. My research explores how digital diasporic intimacy is curated online through visual cultures and their affect. It is underpinned by Black feminism, and this will always underpin my work; it couldn't be anything other than that. It focuses on the ways that Black women have created, shared, and engaged with v...