Throughout the country, “Wring & Write Workshops” are cropping up to empower women to tell their stories. In higher education, contemplative writing pedagogy is on the rise as writing scholars, such as Christy Wenger and Carolina Mancuso, write about the body as it moves through the classroom, as it writes, and as it reaches greater insight through yoga. The stop, drop, and yoga approach to teaching is rather rogue, though, even after a few years of writing and practice. In this session, we will begin with very beginner, light yoga movements to warm up our bodies, our minds, we will write, we will flow with ideas and intentions, and we will discuss the insights we come to for having flowed into writing with our bodies.

Since it’s 2003 founding, StoryCorps, a nonprofit, has collected more than 50,000 interviews. Recently, the founder, David Isay, created an app to allow anyone to record an interview an upload it to the Library of Congress instantly.

While this is a boon to future historians, there are several academic questions. Is there more to oral history than turning on a recorder and talking? How much preparation should go in to preparing an interview? When does an interview become an oral history? In terms of feminist critiques of historical methods, does this answer the demand for more perspectives from more people, or does it substitute quantity for quality?

In this session, we would review the specs of the app, perhaps play with it a bit, and discuss the potential impacts of this app on feminist history and other disciplines. You would not need to download the app before the session.

Here is an article for more reading:  www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2015/03/17/with-one-new-app-the-entire-worlds-oral-history-is-about-to-go-viral/

Cyborg:

1. a fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.

In “The Cyborg Manifesto,” author Donna Haraway proposes advances in feminism in the technological age. Written in 1991, the manifesto serves as both an early introduction to the ways in which technology affected earlier forms of feminism and a prediction of the socioeconomic future in relation to gender, including “the homework economy.”

Beginning with an introduction to basic feminist concepts addressed by Donna, I will later address the main ideas of the manifesto and question if Haraway’s predictions held true. I can also discuss this reading in relation to postmodernism and posthumanism, if desired.

Link to article (pre-reading not required):

www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/

The New Media Writing Studio at Texas Christian University is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting THATCamp Feminisms Texas 2015 on Saturday, March 28, 2015. The unconference will run from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm.

In picking Feminisms as our theme for this THATCamp, we hope to bring together people interested in feminisms and/or digital humanities. Undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff from Texas educational institutions are encouraged to attend. We especially seek attendees who can broaden our scope of inquiry beyond the “ivory tower” of the academy. Our event is open to the public.

The following questions inspired us to chose “THATCamp Feminisms” as our theme:

• What role does gender play (or not play) in the rapidly expanding field of digital humanities?
• How can digital humanities practitioners benefit from feminisms and feminists (especially intersectionality)?
• What can feminists learn from digital humanists?
• In what ways do these communities overlap, challenge, or oppose each other in terms of theories and practice?

THATCamp Feminisms Texas 2015 takes inspiration from the previous THATCamp Feminisms (West, South, East) held in 2013. Major thanks go Jacqueline Wernimont (Arizona State University), who hosted THATCamp Feminisms West at Scripps College, which inspired the two concurrent sister camps Feminisms East and Feminisms South.

Are you unsure about proposing a session and/or workshop for THATCamp Feminisms Texas? Visit the THATCamp Feminisms sites to see what types of session and/or workshops attendees proposed:

• West: feminismswest2013.thatcamp.org/
• East: feminismseast2013.thatcamp.org/
• South: feminismssouth2013.thatcamp.org/

Please browse through the site for more information. Registration opens Monday, January 12, 2015 and is on a first come, first serve basis (we have space for 100 attendees). Questions? Email Jay Jay Stroup, Assistant Director of the NMWS, at .