The DISCO Network Graduate Scholars Program is designed for graduate student researchers committed to developing interdisciplinary work about the intersection between digital technology, culture, race, disability, gender, sexuality, and liberation.

The collective will reflect on its collaborative effort and explore the tensions between digital optimism and technoskepticism.  

Discussion topics include digital worlds, DISCO Network’s collective scholarship and adventures in knowledge dissemination, and future directions for critical humanistic, social science, and artistic approaches to digital studies.

An interactive, Zoom-based presentation entitled “What do you want me to say?” McCarthy’s practice – spanning performance, software, electronics, internet, film, photography, and installation – examines social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living.

This roundtable conversation considers what it means to write, make, and do (or not!) on crip time.

Eight co-authors of Technoskepticism, Lisa Nakamura, Remi Yergeau, André Brock, Catherine Knight Steele, Stephanie Dinkins, Kevin Winstead, and Rianna Walcott, and Jeff Nagy, will be in conversation about this exciting new manuscript.

My argument in this project is to make AI more wild, not less. By wild, I indicate generative possibility for the technology in opposition to the reproduction of the same.

This roundtable stories in/access and crip feelings in the wake of anti-trans and anti-critical race theory legislation, as well as the rollback of COVID-19 protections and policies.

"Asian futures, without Asians" is a multimedia presentation by artist and curator Astria Suparak, which asks: “What does it mean when so many white filmmakers envision futures inflected by Asian culture, but devoid of actual Asian people?”

This talk will examine the current state of the esports industry, discussing and dissecting both the light and the dark side of this captivating space.

This talk provides an exploration into the (in)accessibility of gaming technologies, most notably the Xbox Kinect. While the gaming world remarked on the possibilities created when the body becomes the controller, many Black gamers illustrated the centrality of race in deciding who can (and cannot) participate in this technological potential.

How can people make a living out of playing video games? Who would want to watch them? And why?

Each DISCO Graduate Scholar will give a “lightning talk” on their research affiliated with their DISCO Network lab.

A Symposium on Sneakers, Blackness, and Community

Over the past year, CRT has been a source of discussion everywhere – in the media, in school board meetings, in classrooms – and has generated many questions. During this session, Taifha Alexander, UCLA Law CRT Forward Project Director, will discuss CRT, its founding, and contributions, and the recent assault on the theory.

Join four of our DISCO Network Fellows for short talks on the future of race, gender, disability, and technology with David Adelman (U-Michigan) on “desire”, Aaron Dial (Purdue University) on “algo (rhy) thm”, Lida Zeitlin-Wu (U-Michigan) on “color”, and Coleman Collins (Stonybrook University) on “debt”.

Join Lydia X.Z. Brown in conversation with Remi Yergeau and David Adelman. Lydia X. Z. Brown's work focuses on unearthing, examining, and challenging the intersectional harms of algorithmic technologies on disabled people living at the margins of the margins.

How do we advocate for access in environments that are hostile to life and living? Where can we find community and fellow accomplices as we undertake this work? Please join us as we think-together about access labor, access intimacy, disability justice, and digital crip/mad life in the time of COVID.

In their interactive talk, J. Logan Smilges shows how queer and otherwise marginalized populations navigate the risks that subtend their precarious visibility.

The Digital Accessible Futures Lab is hosting a virtual tea party for undergraduate and graduate students interested in disability culture and community. Meet other disabled and neurodivergent students and play some community-building games! Bring your own cup of tea or other beverage/snack/stim toy of your choosing!

This talk proposes a new feminist media theory that positions the platform as a media object that elevates and amplifies some voices over others while rendering marginal resistance tactics illegible.

Dr. Madison Schmalzer explores the potential for articulating and embodying trans subjectivities through "trans play," in particular focusing on speedrunning: the practice of playing videogames as fast as possible.

Join four of our DISCO Network Fellows for short talks on keywords for the future of race, gender, disability, and technology, with Huan He (U-Michigan) on ‘myth,’ Jeff Nagy on ‘emotion,’ Rianna Walcott (U-Maryland) on ‘ritual,’ and Kevin Winstead (Georgia Tech) on ‘disinformation.’

In this workshop, we will demystify the NSF by discussing the various types of funding opportunities, the format and structure of the application, the internal review process, and the meanings and interpretations of intellectual merit and broader impact

This BCaT Lab Applies Session will help attendees think through the process of preparing their first manuscript for publication. This session is geared toward early career scholars whose research focuses on Digital Studies, Communication, Race, and/or Black studies. Register Here.

This workshop asks us to consider what it means to crip the classroom. What does it mean to teach crip? What does it mean to learn or teach while crip?

Join us for our DISCO Network Lecture Series with Michelle N. Huang.

Asiatic interchangeability is made, not born. In her talk, Michelle N. Huang discusses how dystopian clone narratives challenge notions of individual racialized identity at both the genetic and generic levels. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of racial fungibility, Huang will examine Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl (2002) to trace how Asian American interchangeability is produced through reproductive control as well as an economy of character. In rearticulating, rather than rejecting, notions of shared subjectivity, hivemind, and fellow feeling, Asiatic clones ask for experimental alternatives to the ethnic bildungsroman and demonstrate the novel form itself to be a racialized technology of identity.

Please register in advance for the online Zoom Webinar here: https://bit.ly/3CcvgFL

Please register for the physical meeting space here: https://bit.ly/3R2S3bG

The DISCO Network, the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, and Black Beyond Data will host Catherine Knight Steele for a conversation on digital Black feminism, social media, and Black discourse online.

Register here: https://bit.ly/3QNQehN

DISCO Network Co-Principal Investigators Lisa Nakamura, Rayvon Fouché, Remi Yergeau, André Brock, Stephanie Dinkins, and Catherine Knight Steele will come together in a panel discussion to address current trends and challenges relating to race, gender, disability, and technology, and to address the importance of a network of scholars and technologists examining these intersections.

Each DISCO Graduate Scholar will give a “lightning talk” on their research affiliated with their DISCO Network lab.