Media Releases

U of T Professors Champion Feminist & Queer Approaches in Journal

September 14, 2016

Toron­to, ON – Tech­nol­o­gy. Porn. Net­works. Inti­ma­cy. These words lit­ter the book­shelves of Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor Patrick Keilty, who has already made pub­lish­ing his­to­ry with­in the field of infor­ma­tion stud­ies —twice.

Prof. Keilty, whose research focus­es on how tech­nol­o­gy inter­sects with fem­i­nist and queer issues, recent­ly made his­to­ry when he co-edit­ed the August 2016 issue of Library Trends, “Recon­fig­ur­ing Race, Gen­der, and Sexuality”—the first Library and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence (LIS) jour­nal ded­i­cat­ed entire­ly to race, gen­der, or sex­u­al­i­ty. This issue was based on the Gen­der and Sex­u­al­i­ty in Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies Col­lo­qui­um  held at the iSchool in Octo­ber 2014, which brought togeth­er more than 100 schol­ars, activists, and prac­ti­tion­ers to dis­cuss issues of race, gen­der, and sex­u­al­i­ty in libraries and archives.

In addi­tion to this achieve­ment, Prof. Keilty also broke new ground with his co-edit­ed col­lec­tion, Fem­i­nist and Queer Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies Read­er (Litwin Books, 2013), the first fem­i­nist and/or queer read­er with­in the field of infor­ma­tion stud­ies.

Now he and Pro­fes­sor Leslie Regan Shade are fur­ther­ing their com­mit­ment to social jus­tice by pub­lish­ing a col­lec­tion of essays, record­ed talks, and new media art from the “Fem­i­nist & Queer Approach­es to Techno­science” con­fer­ence at the Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion in 2013–14.

Released today, this is a spe­cial dou­ble issue called “Tra­vers­ing Tech­nolo­gies,” in a high­ly respect­ed web­jour­nal, The Schol­ar & Fem­i­nist Online, pub­lished by the Barnard Cen­ter for Research on Women at Barnard Col­lege, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

Includ­ed in the online edi­tion are sev­en arti­cles and a dozen videos rang­ing from cyber-fem­i­nism, envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­tics, video and instal­la­tion art, gen­der and video games, hack­tivism, to sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies.

“Techno­science con­nects the study of sci­en­tif­ic and tech­nol­o­gy with the pol­i­tics of its world­ly con­se­quences. Our spe­cial issue focus­es on issues of gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, race, and post­colo­nial­ism in order to offer alter­na­tive ways of under­stand­ing and cre­at­ing tech­nol­o­gy,” he explains.

To see this issue, please vis­it: http://sfonline.barnard.edu/traversing-technologies/

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To sched­ule a one-on-one inter­view with Pro­fes­sor Keilty, please con­tact:

Kath­leen O’Brien, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer, Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion, U of T
416.978.7184 or kathleen.obrien@utoronto.ca