This panel brings together Black feminist scholars, writers, and public intellectuals to examine how and why debates about gender, sexuality, and nationality consistently emerge as top topics on social media platforms within Black discursive communities. How do algorithms and influencer culture contribute to sowing discontent and misinformation among Black social media users? We consider the social and political implications, who ultimately benefits from these conversations, and how we can make different choices around our own engagement and participation.

The Search History zine meditates on the implications of an increasingly digital world and asks questions like: How does art help us redefine what technology is? What is your vision of the future and how can art and technology make it a reality? And how do interdisciplinary practices in technology expand traditional knowledge production and storytelling?

In this talk, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin will discuss their recent book and edited volume, Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, published by Duke University Press in May 2025. New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. The book introduces a feminist theory of creep, substantiating it through critical engagement with smart homes, smart dust, smart desires, and smart forests, toward dreams of feminist futures.

Fear and suspicion of Asian technology-- from DeepSeek AI, to social media platforms like TikTok, to Taiwanese semiconductor giants like TSMC that supply the world with chips-- is higher in the U.S. than it has been for decades. This panel brings together leading Asian American researchers, artists, and filmmakers to explore Asia’s role in building today’s high technology. We will also examine how rising anxiety around Asian tech impacts Asian American communities in the U.S. today.

The Department of Digital Humanities and the Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London are delighted to host the launch of the DISCO Network’s Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal (Stanford University Press, 2025). The event will be chaired by Dr. Zeena Feldman (KCL, Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture).

This workshop will be hosted by Christopher Derrell, an award-winning software developer who in his role, manages UX architecture and development to create practical and aesthetic websites.

This panel brings together key voices in infrastructure as broadly imagined, data sovereignty and decolonial perspectives to critically explore the history, present, and future of the indigenous Internet. The conversation will showcase how Indigenous knowledge has and will continue to shape data worlds by bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives on emerging technologies—ranging from computer science, artificial intelligence, social media, online activism, the work of infrastructure and circuit building, and beyond. By centering Indigenous voices, the discussion aims to create transformative visions for a sustainable, equitable, and inclusive digital future while inviting speculative thinking about post-settler digital worlds.

For the first time, two of the most popular apps in the world – TikTok and the A.I. chatbot DeepSeek – are Chinese. American legislative efforts to restrict or outright ban Chinese apps and other technologies on the grounds of national security have dominated recent headlines. During a time of political turmoil, increasing hostility towards trade with other nations, and the rush to maintain U.S. dominance over the tech industry, anti-Chinese sentiment has (re)surfaced in ways that echo earlier American anxieties about Asian labor competition and racial difference. This panel will bring together Asian American media scholars and culture creators to analyze what this climate means for our shifting technological landscape, Asian American communities, and race relations in the U.S.

Join us for the launch of the book Technoskepticism! From Munchausen by Tiktok, to wellness apps, to online communities, to AI, the DISCO Network explores the possibilities that technoskepticism can create. Technoskepticism explores possibility and refusal in new technologies, highlighting how people of color and disabled individuals have long navigated between acceptance and rejection. Technoskepticism shares their stories, revealing the opportunities skepticism can create.

Archives and the Black Tradition explores the significance of personal and digital archives in re/defining historical legacies, promoting narrative control and agency, and expanding conventional notions of memory, place, and truth.

Come celebrate the publication of Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal with Huan He of the DISCO Network.

Celebrate the publication of Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal with the DISCO Network and the Digital Studies Institute! Join us for the release of our new multi-authored monograph with seven of the book's fourteen co-authors.

Search Engines: Art, Tech, Justice and the DISCO Network, housed in the University of Michigan’s Digital Studies Institute, invite you to an artist's talk by Molly Soda. 

Join the BCaT Lab to learn about and receive assistance with the grad school application process!

In our final book club of the semester, the BCaT Lab will be exploring the virtual reality experience “Obsidian”, created by the Black Artists and Designers Guild in 2021. Obsidian is an interactive web story, exploring a digitally recreated home from Oakland Hills, California.

In a climate of scarcity and uncertainty, how might one respond to hyper-normative demands for productivity? What does it mean to write (and publish) as a disabled scholar? What does it mean to compose while crip/mad/sick—especially when our embodied knowledges are deemed antithetical to (academic) life?

Search Engines: Art, Tech, Justice invites you to join us in celebrating the release of the Search History zine!

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.

The BCaT Lab is hosting a field trip on November 20th to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.

Join DISCO Network scholars in a roundtable conversation on Technoskepticism, a topical and timely multi-authored 50,000 word monograph, at the Association of Internet Researchers Conference in Sheffield, UK.

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.

This roundtable conversation considers what it means to design accessible conference presentations, as well as how to survive and navigate conferences as a disabled scholar. How might we advocate for access in inaccessible and often high-stakes terrain? What strategies might we use in our own conference practices to support the work of access creation?

If you are a near/recent grad student considering a career outside of academia, join us as we hear from representatives from the (Smithsonian) National Museum of African American History and Culture, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and independent scholars. 

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.

This semester in BCaT Bookclub we will engage with art exhibitions, films, readings, and more, while exploring Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. View the BCaT Lab’s Black Homeplace Project page for up-to-date information about the weekly topic.