Resources
Working Groups

Working Groups

Join one of our working groups and get involved in the conversation!

New Media Working Group

The Berkeley New Media Working Group is a gathering of graduate students from departments across campus who share an interest in the material, social, political, aesthetic, and philosophical implications of digital media. Anyone with an interest in new media is invited to attend. The working group provides an outlet for those doing work in the humanities, art practice, and STEM fields to share their perspectives and learn from the approaches of other disciplines, with a mix of student-led workshops, group excursions, events, guest speakers, and seminars on technical instruction or professionalization.

Since its founding in 2004, the Group has been organized by a line of dedicated students, each of whom has been committed to fostering an interdisciplinary community and to keeping its members connected to the many new media-related events and engagements around campus. As a central hub for people interested in, curious about or engaged in research in a new and constantly changing discipline, the New Media Working Group has served as an important site for both personal and professional development of its members. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of its subject, the New Media Working Group has been particularly successful at brokering interdepartmental exchange, bringing together scholars and graduate students from departments that may have infrequent opportunities to encounter one another in the sort of informal exchange of ideas and opportunities for intellectual experimentation that the Working Group fosters.

The New Media Working Group is generously funded by the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Berkeley Center for New Media. The New Media Working Group is currently convened by Jaclyn Zhou, PhD Candidate in the department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and the BCNM, and Caleb Murray-Bozeman, PhD Candidate in the department of Film and Media and BCNM. Please contact jwzhou [​at​] berkeley.edu or caleb_murraybozeman [​at​] berkeley.edu for more information or to be added to our mailing list.

Color of New Media Working Group

The Color of New Media is a working group based at the University of California, Berkeley that focuses on technology and intersectionality. We discuss and produce scholarship on BIPOC, women, LGBTQ+, and Global South/LMIC makers and users. The group was founded in 2013 by Abigail De Kosnik and Paige Johnson. The question that led to the group’s origin was: “Is the color of new media white?” -- meaning, Why do academic studies and popular narratives about technology so frequently privilege white inventors and white users? The Color of New Media seeks to diversify new media studies by researching technological phenomena, platforms, and practices through the lenses of critical race theory, gender and sexuality studies, disability studies, environmental studies, Global South and diaspora studies, and social movement studies. Issues currently of interest to the group are social media and social difference; diversity in television, film, music, and gaming; political fandoms; and how to define key concepts and moments in the history of new media.

The Color of New Media’s first book, #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation was published in an open-access edition by University of Michigan Press in 2019: https://www.press.umich.edu/9697147/. The group is currently working on its second book project.

The Color of New Media is supported by the Center for Race and Gender (https://www.crg.berkeley.edu/) and the Berkeley Center for New Media (http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/). The faculty co-organizers of The Color of New Media are Abigail De Kosnik (adekosnik@berkeley.edu) and Keith Feldman (kpfeldman@berkeley.edu). The group meets monthly on the UC Berkeley campus or on the Zoom platform. To join the group and subscribe to the mailing list, please email the faculty co-organizers.