Week 1

Mandatory Reading

• Hjorth, L., & Lim, S. S. (2012). Mobile intimacy in an age of affective mobile media. Feminist Media Studies, 12(4), 477-484.
• Thelandersson, F. (2020). Mediated Intimacies. Encyclopaedia of Gender, Media and Communication. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Rambukkana, N. and Wang, K. (2020) Digital intimacies. Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Dobson, A.S. (2025 forthcoming) Digital Intimacies. Encyclopedia of Queer Studies, Rob Cover and Christy Newman (Eds). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Rationale

Some assign more for the first week, and some assign less. For this beginning module, I referenced Dr. Duffy's syllabus and incorporated "smaller" pieces as entry points. At the same time, as special issue introductions and encyclopedia entries are themselves condensed miniatures of scholarly discussions, these three pieces offer three distinct screenshots of how scholars have conceptualized what "digital intimacies" are and anticipate the different approaches to this topic. While Thelandersson's piece primarily concerns the digital mediation of what we traditionally regard as intimate matters, such as sexuality and kinship, Hjorthc and Lim as well as Rambukkana and Wang lean toward the conceptualization of "intimacy" in Dobson et al.'s (2018) edited volume and consider various kinds of interconnectedness with an increasing emphasis on global experiences.

I am also particularly grateful for Dr. Dobson providing the forthcoming encyclopedia piece, which also helped me decide that I will not include “risk and opportunity” as one of the orienting frameworks.