Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities

(edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont, University of Minnesota Press, 2018)

Reviewed by Elena Kalodner-Martin

Introduction

Book cover of Bodies of Information

The works included in Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities center non-normative and non-privileged voices within the field and call for new ways of seeing, practicing, and theorizing the digital humanities (DH). In doing this, the writers in this edited collection practice a critical awareness that we are never building only for, or as, ourselves (Flanders, 2018, p. 302). From exploring queer methodologies to the implications on the reliance on invisible postdoc and alt-ac labor to game studies, Bodies of Information takes a wide exploratory stance on how intersectional feminism can, and will, push for a more inclusive DH field.

Editors Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont interpreted an intersectional feminist lens through what they called boundary objects, which organized the central themes of this collection: materiality, values, embodiment, affect, labor, and situatedness. What each boundary object offered, and what the title of the book paid homage to, was the relationship between bodies and data, a connection that posthuman narratives and hegemonic academic traditions have historically attempted to uncouple.

The editors thus began by reminding readers of our current political atmosphere and how systemic racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and homophobia has infiltrated not only the buildings of government officials but thoughts, practices, and scholarship from within institutions of higher education. In drawing on anecdotes of the voices who appear in digital humanities conferences and publications—and by extension, those who do not—the introduction to this anthology called attention first to how intersectional feminist methodologies are central but overlooked contributions to the DH field.

(Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities can be read as an open access text online at the Debates in the Digital Humanities series or through JSTOR.)