American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations

"I Learned About This Online:" The Role of Indian Digital Feminist Activism as Public Pedagogy

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

American Culture Studies

First Advisor

Radhika Gajjala (Committee Chair)

Second Advisor

Francisco Cabanillas (Other)

Third Advisor

Sandra Faulkner (Committee Member)

Fourth Advisor

Timothy Messer-Kruse (Committee Member)

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are utilized by Indian feminists to facilitate feminist teaching and learning. Additionally, it grapples with the constraints and negotiations surrounding such digital feminist efforts, including the politics of visibility and labor. This project is particularly interested in understanding the modes and labor of feminist (activist) content creation, the role of such content creation as digital public pedagogical resources to learn about feminist histories and contemporary discourse, and the politics of performing activism online. I use critical feminist and intersectional approaches in my textual analysis of feminist content creation as pedagogy and to examine the complexities of performing resistance online, and critical autoethnography to weave in my experiences of embodying feminist spaces on social media as a learner.

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