"Breaching the Screen: A Digital Technofeminist Methodology for Virtual" by Frank Macarthy

Graduation Term

Spring 2025

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of English

Committee Chair

Angela Haas

Committee Member

Joyce Walker

Committee Member

Julie Jung

Committee Member

Elise Hurley

Abstract

This dissertation provides a methodological framework that seeks to further scholarly and pedagogical inquiry at the intersections of feminist rhetorical studies, digital rhetoric, and cultural studies. More specifically, drawing upon theories of technofeminism (relationships among technology and feminism) and cyberfeminism (relationships among the internet and feminism), this dissertation proposes a digital technofeminist methodology to study the complex relationships between virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies, bodies, and rhetoric. This framework aims to help digital rhetoric scholar-teachers to critically investigate digital technologies that blur the distinction between virtuality, material bodies, and realities.

Building on digital rhetoric and technofeminist scholarship, this dissertation employs a technofeminist approach to study virtual reality peripherals, highlighting the material of the digital and identity in virtual and augmented spaces. Using case study as a method to unpack the rhetorical complexities of this underresearched composition tool, this dissertation demonstrates how new perspectives of reality necessitate a modification of digital and multimodal rhetorics, theories, frameworks, and curricula. Further, this dissertation will begin an analysis of the effects augmented and mixed realities can have on spatial relations, identity politics, and materiality—as well as how spatiality, identities, and materialities can and should affect augmented and mixed realities.

The second case study offers a curricular and pedagogical example of digital technofeminist course design and praxis. Drawing on data collected from students during two sections of ENG 239: Multimodal Composition—including literacy narratives, beginning- and end-of-semester surveys, and end-of-semester interviews—this dissertation reveals and theorizes the affordances and limitations of using a technofeminist digital rhetorical methodological framework to inform pedagogical contexts.

Finally, this dissertation discusses the future possibilities for digital technofeminism—in and out of the classroom.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

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