As of right now, my research agenda has a definite primary and secondary concern…and each of those are of multiple parts. At least I’m never bored!
My primary research focus thus far has been on the juncture of material and/or visual rhetoric, craft (particularly needlework), and feminism. I’ve specifically looked at protest knitting, online knitting communities, and needlework as rhetorical practice. I’m very interested in looking at this historically as a form of coded discourse where constraint produced new forms and abilities to comment on the dominant culture. I’m also interested in taking a modern view, looking at the ways these practices are still in play, as well as ways that they’ve changed. Certainly, women in western culture are freer in many ways to speak their minds now than they were a hundred years ago…but what specific things might be gained by using needlework to do so?
Thus far, I’ve conferenced on this research path, and a book chapter that I’m collaborating on about it has been accepted for publication. I’d like to eventually do my dissertation on this field. I’d like it to be an overview of why craft is rhetorically important that then interrogates specific practices; I truly feel that it is deeply necessary to understand this area for both rhetoricians and feminists, so I’ve got a deep activist zeal for this work.
The secondary focus that I’ve started to work with has been visual rhetorics of online gender presentation, particularly as it has to do with avatars in Secondlife. Further, I’m particularly curious about the ways that the gender presentation of these avatars relates to the creator’s concepts of real-life sex and gender, particularly in cross-gender gaming. There are some very interesting things to look at here: transgender issues, feminism, the collision of online and real-life identities, and other areas. This is a relatively new interest of mine, but I’d like to keep working in this area. It might merge with the first through the heavy use of craft (particularly clothing design) in Secondlife, but I don’t want to force the areas together.
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