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Week 3: What Do We Talk About When We Talk About (Digital) Intimacy?

Mandatory Reading

  • Berlant, L. (1998). Intimacy: A Special Issue. Critical Inquiry, 24(2), 281–288. https://doi.org/10.1086/448875.
  • Wilson, A. (2012). Intimacy: A Useful Category of Transnational Analysis. In G. Pratt & V. Rosner (Eds.), The Global and the Intimate. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/prat15448-002
  • Dobson, A. S., Carah, N., & Robards, B. (2018). Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media: Towards Theorising Public Lives on Private Platforms. In A. S. Dobson, B. Robards, & N. Carah (Eds.), Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media (pp. 3–27). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97607-5_1
  • Rambukkana, N. (2024). Teaching through Digital Intimacies. In N. Kouri-Towe (Ed.), Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom (pp. 247–262). Concordia University Press.

Further Reading

  • Wilson, A. (2016). The infrastructure of intimacy. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 41(2), 247-280.
  • Berlant, L. (2017). Affective Assemblages: Entanglements & Ruptures—An Interview with Lauren Berlant. Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, 38(2), 12-17.
  • Paasonen, S., Jaaksi, V., Koivunen, A., Nikunen, K., Talvitie-Lamberg, K., & Vänskä, A. (2023). Intimate infrastructures we depend upon: Living with data. Media Theory, 7(2), 285-308.

Rationale

This module functions as a cornerstone for entering the later modules, so I have kept it more up-to-date and in line with my word choice of "digital intimacy." The only (hopefully understandable) exception is Berlant's piece, primarily because it is referenced in almost every article using this framework and, as Rambukkana and Wang (2020) state, has shaped what we know as critical intimacy studies today. Therefore, I included it to provide more context for the students.

The other two pieces reflect more of my pedagogical considerations. As Wilson’s piece expands the transnational perspective of critical intimacy studies, Rambukkana’s writing offers an intriguing opportunity for graduate students to reflect on their positionalities as both students and future teachers of digital intimacies.