With what I hope is the-last-semester-of-remote-teaching coming to an end, I’ve finally found a little time to share some highlights of the past few months. First and foremost, I have really enjoyed teaching an undergraduate course on the Long Spanish Transition to Democracy where we explored how Spanish sensibilities and citizens’ sense of politics have changed (or not) as they are represented in popular cultural products since Franco’s dictatorship till pretty much today. I had not planned it this way, but the class ended up being a crash course on feminist studies (for me) so I have my brilliant and courageous students to thank for that!
I also gave a bunch of talks and had a couple of artworks exhibited this semester. A somewhat oldie, Red Emoji Heart (2016), was on display at the most wonderful online show ever: Unbounded Unleashed Unforgiving: Reconsidering Cyberfeminism in 2021, curated by Mel Clemmons and Liss LaFleur. Featuring 24 artists (including yours truly), this exhibition was part of a multimodal exploration into cyberfeminism, and curated content also included a pre-recorded video, highlighting the Cyberfeminist Index with Mindy Sue, as part of the College Art Association and New Media Caucus 2021 programming. Unbounded Unleashed Unforgiving was a virtual exhibition hosted by newart.city on view from February 10 through May 10, 2021. I also gave a short artist talk as part of the closing event, so check that out too because it should be recorded somewhere! For full details please visit: cyberfeminism2021.com
As part of the Electronic Literature Organization’s 2021 exhibitions, my work Room #3 is also on display in the COVID E-LIT online exhibit. You can visit the piece here, but you might want to wait a little if you find yourself to be Zoomed out these days.
The show features some fantastic work that responds thematically to the pandemic and/or are produced within the specific context of platform culture during the pandemic. It was curated by Anna Nacher, Søren Pold, and Scott Rettberg and is on display during May 2021.
The COVID E-Lit team, sponsored by DARIAH-EU, have also been working on a documentary featuring some of the artists, and you can check out some of the excerpts here. You can listen to me talking a little bit about Room #3 as well:
Finally, I gave a few scholarly talks at different venues. I shared my research on using digital tools to teach e-lit (mostly in Spanish but not only) as a kind of material practice at the Modern Language Association (January 2021) and I participated in a project sponsored by Radley College Oxford to help Spanish A Level high school candidates in the UK prepare for their exams. I was asked to discuss Almodóvar’s movie Volver, which was a treat since I don’t get to talk about such things much! Here’s the video for that webinar as well. And, least but definitely not last, I was happy to share my research on web materiality and the Capitalocene at the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts annual conference in March. This talk is part of what I hope is going to be my next book, so it was exciting to share. Now, if I only I found the time to work on that book project…
Maybe next academic year? Till then, my friends. Thank you for reading.
A
