Feminist Bloggers

Blogging is an increasingly important phenomenon on the Web, but
it's not always easy to get information about female bloggers,
and especially about feminist bloggers.  The following discussion
may help.  It took place on WMST-L in May 2005.  For additional
WMST-L files available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

<Sorry third wave listserv folks for the cross-post!>

I'm working on putting some ideas together for a
paper/presentation/(eventual) research on weblogs and feminist theory.
I've been thinking more and more about this lately, and have been
intrigued by the rise in number of really great feminist blogs like
feministing.com (if you haven't seen it, check it out) 
and ms. musings.  

Is anyone out there doing research on blogging and what it means for
feminist theory/activism? Know anyone who is?

And, just in case you're interested, here are some of the responses I've
gotten so far:

http://kaye.trammell.com/blog/index.html 

http://blogresearch.com/ref.html 

http://www.livejournal.com/community/_wehavebrains_/ 

http://culturecat.net/node/305 

http://feministe.us/blog/ 

http://www.feministblogs.org/   

thanks to those who have responded so far.

 
*please reply privately to me and I will be happy to compile another
list later for all who are interested*

*********************************

Gwendolyn Beetham 
Program/Research Associate
National Council for Research on Women (NCRW)
11 Hanover Square, 24th floor
New York, NY 10005
www.ncrw.org

Sorry bout that - I meant to reply privately to Gwendolyn.  But now that
I'm here (sheepishly), I wanted to throw out that I am very interested
in feminist blogging as a particularly "third" "fourth" "fifth" (!) wave
endeavor.  If anyone has citations to anything that's been written
(popular or academic) about younger women's blogging in particular, I'd
be very interested.

All best,
Deborah

*********************************************
Deborah Siegel, Ph.D.
Director of Special Projects/Member Center Communications
National Council for Research on Women
11 Hanover Square, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10005
dsiegel AT ncrw.org

We have a series of articles about feminist blogs forthcoming in future
issues of FEMINIST COLLECTIONS: A QUARTERLY OF WOMEN'S STUDIES
RESOURCES. I'll send a message to the list when the first is available.

Sincerely,
Phyllis
--
****************************************************
Phyllis Holman Weisbard, Women's Studies Librarian
University of Wisconsin System
430 Memorial Library, 728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
pweisbard  AT  library.wisc.edu
http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/
****************************************************

--On Wednesday, May 04, 2005 6:30 PM -0400 Gwendolyn Beetham
<gbeetham  AT  NCRW.ORG> wrote:

> Is anyone out there doing research on blogging and what it means for
> feminist theory/activism? Know anyone who is?

I have the feeling that my Alzheimer's brain DOES know of some work
on feminist blogs, but my brain is behaving the way it usually does.
So instead of providing references for such work, I'll simply call
people's attention to three feminist blogs that I enjoy; all focus on
women/gender and technology, but there are lots of feminist issues to
deal with there.  The three are

netwoman - http://netwomen.ca/Blog/  - Tracy Kennedy's blog
misbehaving.net - http://www.misbehaving.net/ - a multiple-author
        blog
gender & computing - http://www.genderandcomputing.no/ - Hilde
        Corneliussen's blog (parts in Norwegian, parts in English)

If anyone knows of other good blogs focusing on women & technology,
please let me know.

        Joan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Joan Korenman                  jskor  AT  umbc.edu
U. of Md. Baltimore County     http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/
Baltimore, MD 21250  USA       http://www.umbc.edu/wmst/

The only person to have everything done by Friday is Robinson Crusoe
--------------------------------------------------------------------

A friend of mine, Lois Scheidt, who is working on her PhD in
Information Studies at IU, is doing research on blogs and blogging,
especially how it is used and consumed by adolescents. She's compiled
an extensive list of references on blog research in general which
might be useful to someone.

It's actually linked from her blog:
http://www.professional-lurker.com/linked/static/Weblog_and_Blog_Bibliography.pdf

the direct link to her blog is:
http://www.professional-lurker.com

Sarah Mercure
MLS/MIS Candidate
School of Library & Information Science
Indiana University-Bloomington

You might be interested in the Blogher Conference

http://www.blogher.org/

here's their mission statement:


http://www.blogher.org/2005/04/mission_what_is.html

and see this

http://www.blogher.org/2005/04/announcing_blog.html

I thought they had links to the blog posts that began the discussion
that led to the conference being organized; I can try to find them if
people are interested.

http://www.thefword.org.uk/

is a UK site for younger feminists, it has a blog


http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/index


Blogher isn't really about blogging/feminist theory, though --
thefword isn't either, but is activist-orientated.

--
Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK
mailto:judithevans1  AT  tiscali.co.uk

Hello,

I am enjoying this thread on feminist blogs.

Gwedolyn and I have emailed each other about feminist blogs and I agree
that one of the best resources is Tracey Kennedy's blog. I thought that
I would add that I am writing my dissertation on English-language
feminist blogs from Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  I claim there is a
group of women who blog who I call "cyberconduits". Cyberconduits are
cyberfeminists who advocate for social justice on a local level but use
digital media and technology, such as blogging, to connect with
activists on a global scale and who, themselves, act as knowledge
conduits.

I am presenting a paper that calls for more feminist scholarship on
blogs and digital communication, entitled 'Blogging for Life' in July
as part of  the 6th International Conference of Women into Computing.
There are very few empirical papers on blogs, let alone papers that
focus on gender. In addition to the great sources already mentioned,
Susan Herring at Indiana is good and so is Denise Bortree who recently
published an ethnography of teenage girls and blogs. That citation is:

Bortree, Denise S. (2005). Presentation of Self on the Web: an
ethnographic study of teenage girls^-
weblogs. Education, Communication & Information, Vol. 5, No. 1.

The University of Minnesota recently published  Into the Blogosphere an
"online, edited collection [that] explores discursive, visual, social,
and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and
critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog
communities. Such a project requires a multidisciplinary approach, and
contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication,
Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others."
It is a collection of peer reviewed articles that is in the form of a
community blog. Unfortunately, because of spam and other reasons, the
comment sections of the blog are no longer active.

It is located at: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/

One of the blogs that I examine in my dissertation, Baghdad Burning, is
now in book form published by Feminist Press.

Finally, in Kristin Langellier and Eric Peterson's book "Performing
Narrative: Storytelling in Daily Life" (Temple University Press) there
is a chapter dedicated to blogging and, while it does not focus on
gender or feminism, it does apply to feminist analyses.

Happy blogging (but don't underestimate the power of the wiki wiki web!)

Tess Pierce - the kick ass liberal curmudgeon
Clark University, PhD Candidate
Women's Studies
tess  AT  etresoft.com
http://www.tess.ws
The only thing that prevents everything from happening at once is time
. . .
and time is an illusion.

Hello Gwendolyn (We miss you!) and all the WMST ppl.

I am Gabriela De Cicco, one of the coordinator of RIMA - Red Informativa
de Mujeres de Argentina (WINA - Women Information Network fromArgentina)

Our work is based on the use of the ICT's. Our website
<http://www.rimaweb.com.ar/> is on line since mid-2000, and it takes its
resources from all what circulates in the main e-list.
We have launched a feminist blog (the first in Argentina) in June, 6th,
2004, <http://mujeresabordo.blogspot.com/>.

For a lot of feminist and women's group here as in other countries of
latin American, the tool "blog" is something to be discovered.
We are trying to bring the attention to its potencial.

I am planing to put together some ideas about the feminist use of the
blogs that I have been writing down in my personal blog:
http://pont_des_arts.blogspot.com/

I think there is a bunch of good blogs in spanish, feminist and
lesbofeminist. They seem to be the seed of something more strronger to come!

The first country in this list is Spain. We are trying to make a list of
good feminist blogs in spanish, but, for now, our list is very short.
But we're lucky all of them are have really good stuff.

We know this is a work in progress. If some one wants to discuss this is
spanish will be welcome!

Un abrazo desde Rosario, cheers,

Gabriela De Cicco
Coordinadora de RIMA - Red Informativa de Mujeres de Argentina
Moderadora de ^+enLACes^+ lista-e en espa±ol de AWID
(Asociaci=n para los Derechos de la Mujer y el Desarrollo), Canadß

The following are the responses I received to my post on feminist
blogging-- thanks to all who responded. If I left anything off,let me
know and, again, apologies for cross-posting...

************************ 
A series of articles about feminist blogs are
forthcoming in future issues of FEMINIST COLLECTIONS: A QUARTERLY OF
WOMEN'S STUDIES RESOURCES (Phyllis Holman Weisbard
pweisbard  AT  LIBRARY.WISC.EDU will email the list when these are
available).

Krista Scott-Dixon's thesis on ezines: http://www.stumptuous.com/mrp.html

Grrrl zines website: www.grrrlzines.net <http://www.grrrlzines.net/>

(NOTE: Many of the listed blogs also have extensive lists/links of their own)

Blog rings: http://www.ringsurf.com/netring?action=stats&ring=girlsbloguk
http://ringsaround.net/womenbloggers/
http://www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=carla;action=list

Blogher Conference: http://www.blogher.org/

The F-Word Blog (UK): http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/index

BROG research group: http://www.blogninja.com/

RIMA (Argentina): http://mujeresabordo.blogspot.com/

Bitch PhD: http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/

Into the Blogosphere (University of Minnesota): http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/

Lois Scheidt (working on her PhD in Information Studies at IU): 
http://www.professional-lurker.com 

Netwoman: http://netwomen.ca/Blog/

Multi-author blogs on gender and computing: http://www.misbehaving.net/ 

http://www.genderandcomputing.no/

Majikthise: http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/

Pandagon (2-person blog...the girl is Amanda): http://www.pandagon.net/

Pacific Views: http://www.pacificviews.org/

Body and Soul: http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog/

Talk Left: http://www.talkleft.com/

Rox Populi!: http://roxanne.typepad.com/rantrave/

Blondesense: http://blondesense.blogspot.com/

Echidne of the Snakes: http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/

Sisyphus Shrugged: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jmhm/

Shakespeare's Sister: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/


And here are the blogs I listed on my initial email:

http://kaye.trammell.com/blog/index.html

http://blogresearch.com/ref.htm

http://www.livejournal.com/community/_wehavebrains_/

http://feministing.com 

http://culturecat.net/node/305

http://msmusings.net 

*********************************
Gwendolyn Beetham
Program/Research Associate
National Council for Research on Women (NCRW)
11 Hanover Square, 24th floor
New York, NY 10005
gbeetham  AT  ncrw.org

JOIN US FOR NCRW'S 2005 ANNUAL CONFERENCE! REGISTER AT www.ncrw.org