Pamela Maria Schmidt, Experimental Digital Media Master's student, will be taking over our Instagram from Nov. 28 - Dec. 3 to bring us along on her travels to Prague for the "Monsters: an Inclusive Interdisciplinary Project" conference organized by Progressive Connexions.
In partnership with Emerald Publishing, Progressive Connexions has organized a new interdisciplinary series to promote innovative research and encourage exemplary publishing in interdisciplinary living, thinking and practice. Schmidt will be presenting her paper, "Looking Through the Glass: Monsterizing Technology and the Social Media Cyborg" at the proceedings. (NB: this is an earlier draft, not a finalized, published version of her essay).
Schmidt's research presents an intertextual analysis of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" in order to generate insights about our interaction with social media. How do we develop, experiment, and perform identity through social media channels? She'll argue that humans and technologies should not be considered binary, and, rather, we should consider ourselves as cyborgs:
We have now internalized technology and escaped the limits of the community by realizing that we can genuinely change ourselves and our origins without consequence. A cyborg lives in both realities to make a cohesive whole.
- Pamela Maria Schmidt
Schmidt will be on our Instagram throughout her time at the conference to show us the behind-the-scenes of disseminating research internationally. We can also expect to see her discoveries of the values of cross-disciplinary research sharing, and, hopefully, some photos of the beautiful city of Prague.