After a successful reading group pilot during the Winter 2025 semester, where we focused on the thematic unit of Algorithms, the Digital Intimacy, Gender and Sexuality (DIGS) Lab’s reading group is back!
DIGS Reading group is an initiative led by the lab’s graduate student members, envisioned as an academic “third place” in which we discuss scholarship related to digital intimacy, gender and sexuality in a semi-formal setting. This time, we are setting out to explore the topic of Queer Interfaces.
Interface, a concept originating in physics, has spread across various disciplines to denote “any communicative interchange that takes place in a specific space” (Scolari, p. 215). The interface refers to a dialectical site of interplay, in which media technologies and users/consumers negotiate their participation and actualization within this shared space. According to media theorists Brandon Hookway (2014) and Alexander Galloway (2012), the interface can be understood as a relation that emerges between the user and the technical object, or an effect that emerges from that relation rather than simply being an object that is designed and prepared for use. Both Hookway and Galloway insist that an interface is a boundary, or a threshold condition that opens up gateways to new conditions. In that sense, the interfaces of social media do not only concern the features of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) the users interact with, but are a whole network of relations, effects and possibilities that arise from those interactions. The interface, as a site that delimits the conditions of agency and participation, doesn’t only serve to bring disparate agents into an act of exchange, but additionally produces forms of subjectivity that make communication between those agents possible (Hookway, 2014). Given that no “technology is single use” (Lingel, 2014), we are asking, how do interfaces of digital archiving, social media and dating platforms help shape queer subjectivity, connectivity, culture and history? And on the other side, how does queerness complicate, subvert or otherwise intervene in norms and conditions of digital interfaces?
This reading group is imagined as a space for discussion, inquiry and experimentation with three meetings planned until the end of the fall semester. In order to sign up, please send your name, department, and university to digslab@concordia.ca and indicate which meeting(s) you would like to attend. Upon sign-up, we will send you more information about the meeting times and locations, as well as the readings in PDF format. To facilitate a focused discussion, we set a cap of 12 participants per meeting (with a waiting list in case of increased interest). Below you can find the schedule. Before each meeting, we will send a short introduction to the topic, accompanied by some thought-provoking ice-breakers. These meetings are intended to be in-person, but there is a hybrid option available; if you require this accommodation, please let us know. For that and other inquiries, write to the DIGS Lab coordinator Dunja Nešović at digslab@concordia.ca.
We look forward to exploring the theme of Queer Interfaces with you, its multiple variations and possibilities.
References:
Galloway, A. (2012). The Interface Effect. Polity.
Hookway, B. (2014). Interface. MIT Press.
Lingel, J. (2017). Digital countercultures and the struggle for community. MIT Press.
Scolari, C. A. (2012). Media Ecology: Exploring the Metaphor to Expand the Theory. Communication Theory, 22(2), 204–225.
Schedule
Meeting 1:
September 15
Reading: McKinney, C. (2015). Body, sex, interface: Reckoning with images at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Radical history review, 2015(122), 115-128.
Meeting 2:
October 23
Reading: Szulc, L. (2019). Profiles, identities, data: Making abundant and anchored selves in a platform society. Communication Theory, 29(3), 257-276.
Meeting 3:
November 20
Reading: Tziallas, E. (2015). "Gamified Eroticism: Gay Male 'Social Networking' Applications and Self-Pornography". Sexuality & Culture, 19(4), 759-775.
Cover image credits:
"Ignite: Tenets of Interface Design" by juhansonin is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.