Deadline: July 31, 2020
Call for proposals for a special issue of Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media (www.digitalicons.org)
“Digital Selves: Embodiment and Co-Presence in New Media Cultures in Central Europe and Eurasia” (to be published early summer 2021)
Guest editors: Cassandra Hartblay and Tatiana Klepikova (University of Toronto)
Since the emergence of new media cultures, the theorization of the relationship between embodied positioning in space and our digital personas has evolved in new and significant directions. We have become increasingly aware of the forms of extended, multiple and fragmented selves that are made possible by internet and computer-facilitated settings. New media have championed previously unthinkable practices of self-representation necessitating a change in how researchers understand the virtual traces of our bodies online and the relationship between material bodies and physical spaces.
As of recently, the global pandemic has shifted daily practices and forced many people to seek new, predominantly online, ways of socializing. However, even before this crisis, there were many digital ways of being apart together – developed in minority or marginalized communities. For instance, in mid-March 2020, Russian disability activists started a hashtag campaign, #ButWeAreAlwaysAtHome (#АМыВсегдаДома) seeking to mobilize popular conversations about ‘surviving quarantine’ to highlight ongoing social exclusion of people with disabilities and crip strategies for living at home.
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