On Digital Futures and Social Justice: Examining Trans Politics and the Internet

Comparative World Literature is hosting its annual conference themed around digital studies on April 19-20, 2023. We are excited to announce events sponsored by a CLA Scholarly Intersections Grant, “On Digital Futures and Social Justice: Examining Trans Politics and the Internet.” Co-sponsoring departments include Journalism & Public Relations, Political Science, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Sociology. We hope you can attend.

“On Digital Futures and Social Justice: Examining Trans Politics and the Internet” as part of the 

ON DIGITAL PASTS AND FUTURES: COMP LIT CONFERENCE PROGRAM 2023

Conference Keynote:
Dr. Cassius Adair, “Reverse Engineering: From Trans Tech Histories to Radical Trans Futures” 
Thursday April 20 from 2-3:30pm in the Anatol Center
Zoom registration link

Between 1968, when groundbreaking engineer Lynn Conway was fired from IBM for being trans, and 2020, when she finally received an apology, the status of many trans people in the tech sector has undergone a radical transformation. For decades, trans women (and other trans people) contributed major innovations to the computing industry, all while battling transphobia, misogyny, and erasure. Yet today, many major tech companies spotlight key trans technologists in their marketing materials, offer comprehensive trans-related health benefits to employees, and even issue press releases condemning transphobic legislation; Apple, IBM, and Google, for example, have all taken steps to style themselves as “pro-trans” organizations. The story of how transness went from corporate risk to strategic commodity, this talk argues, can inform our academic and activist understandings of corporate diversity, racial capital, and trans justice today. 

Cassius Adair is an audio producer, writer, and researcher from Virginia. As an editor, producer, and consultant, he has contributed to a number of award-winning audio documentaries, including the Bodies podcast from KCRW, Harsh Reality and Twin Flames for Wondery, and StoryCorp’s “Stonewall Outloud” series. He has also worked as a story consultant or script editor for major literary and media projects, including Brit Bennett’s #1 New York Times Bestseller The Vanishing Half. His independent podcast Transcripts, produced in collaboration with the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, received Mozilla’s “Activist Playbook” award. With Tuck Woodstock, he is the co-founder of the storytelling and gender equity company Sylveon Consulting. Currently, he is contributing to a new audio documentary series about queer music cultures for SiriusXM.    Dr. Adair has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, a research fellow at the Digital Research Ethics Collaboratory at the University of Toronto and an outside member of the Precarity Lab at the University of Michigan. During the 2021-2022 academic year, he was a Fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) with an affiliation at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota. He is an appointed member of the Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession at the Modern Language Association and on the editorial board of the journal Communication, Culture, and Critique. His writing appears in American Quarterly, American Literature, Avidly, The Rumpus, Make Literary Magazine, Nursing Clio, Misadventures Magazine, Semiotic Review, and Transgender Studies Quarterly. He is a coauthor of the experimental scholarly book Technoprecarious (MIT, 2020) and is currently writing a book about transgender people and the Internet.

Please email Crystal Yin Lie (crystal.lie@csulb.edu) with accessibility requests and/or concerns.