From the CFP:
This gathering seeks to create an inclusive space for difficult, fruitful conversations around technology, however defined, as it affects and is affected by race, gender, sexuality, and ability. We aim to foster conversations that consider “technology” as the expression of material cultures, labor, and embodiment; as well as sites of empowerment or oppression.
In libraries, and in the professional discourses of librarianship and information studies, we often talk about “technology” as a means to an end. Or, we speculate about technology as though it emanated from the horizon of a futurity that appears sometimes threatening, sometimes empowering, but always inevitable: e.g., artificial intelligence will “revolutionize” the ways we find and use information. Both kinds of discourse omit the ways technologies begin and end in the flesh — how technologies shape habits of body and mind, just as those habits influence the design and construction of technologies.
The planning committee for the 2020 Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium invites you to join continue these conversations July 24, 2020 in Washington, DC at George Washington University.