MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135
“Communities Incarnate: Virtual Intimacies of Body and Place” by MARIA VELAZQUEZ
In this talk, Maria Velazquez investigates the creative processes through which citizens are made, with particular attention to the role that technologies like blogging, virtual reality, and electronic activism foster the use of “imaginative embodiment” in creating stories of citizenship, selfhood, and action. “Imaginative embodiment” suggests the ways in which performing citizenship involves a mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual investment in incarnating particular political and social ideals. Velazquez’s examines three areas, the Go Mamasita! Dance Studio, a site envisioned as a place where women of color, particularly African- American women, can reconnect with dance ancestry, a nexus to North African dance traditions, filtered through the lens of digital diaspora; Red Light Center (RLC), an adults-only virtual world, similar in design to World of Warcraft or SecondLife, to discuss the role pre-structuring technology takes in creating erotic virtual cityscapes; and the blogosphere, particularly blogs that grapple with anti-racist discourse, fandom, and popular culture. Through an investigation of these spaces, Velazquez describes the ways individuals engage in virtual and “real-world” activism. Actions and behaviors that highlight the ways in which the language of friendship, holism, and community is mobilized in conversations about citizenship, the body, and desire. While a dance studio, a pornographic virtual world, and segments of the blogosphere may seem like a disparate collection of sites for investigation, all three share an abiding interest in the body and its potential as site of pleasure.
MARIA VELAZQUEZ is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) in American Studies, and MITH Winnemore Dissertation Fellow. Her research interests include constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality in contemporary media, as well as community building and technology. She serves on the board of Lifting Voices, a District of Columbia-based nonprofit that helps young people in DC discover the power of creative writing. She blogs for The Hathor Legacy (www.thehathorlegacy.com), a feminist pop culture blog, and recently received the Winnemore Dissertation Fellowship from the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). She has also received a fellowship from the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity’s Interdisciplinary Scholars Program. Her dissertation project examines the use of the body as a component in community building, paying particular attention to the Bellydancers of Color Association, the anti-racist blogosphere, and Red Light Center, an adults’ only virtual world. Maria is also a Ron Brown Scholar and an alumna of Smith College.
A continuously updated schedule of talks is also available on the Digital Dialogues webpage.
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All talks free and open to the public! Refreshments are often provided but attendees are welcome to bring their own lunches.
Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (http://mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927).