Queer Data Studies

Edited by Patrick Keilty

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Data, perilous and powerful, is both a worldmaking and a dismantling force. The collection of data about queer lives and bodies, the consequences of data analysis for queer subjects, and considerations of privacy and consent often present ethical dilemmas even as queer data expands our understanding of who and what counts. The need for queer analyses and perspectives has taken on a new sense of urgency in light of hostile anti-queer policies by major technology companies, the security theater of airports, the disproportionate rates of policing queer people and people of color, digital surveillance in border security, and the proliferation of digital health records.

Gathering wide-ranging interdisciplinary conversations into one rich volume, Queer Data Studies challenges readers to rethink how the extraction, circulation, modeling, governance, and use of data affects queer subjects and, at the same time, to consider how the power of data might be harnessed in the service of queer ethics. Contributors take a capacious approach to data, drawing from a range of sources, including stories, sounds, medical data, police data, maps, and algorithmic modeling. This anthology engages intersectional, decolonial, feminist, queer, and trans research, advancing ongoing dialogues about data across the social sciences, humanities, and applied sciences.

“Through a series of daring, original, important case studies, Queer Data Studies proposes a novel concept that fundamentally challenges each of the terms it brings together. How can data be queer if queerness resists categorization and data demands categories? Timely, well researched, socially engaged, and overall a fantastic contribution to the fields of media studies, queer theory, and algorithmic analysis.”—micha cárdenas, author of Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media november

Patrick Keilty is associate professor in the Faculty of Information and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. He is coeditor of Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader.

280 pp., 7 b&w illus., 2 tables, 6 × 9 in. $105.00x / £84.00 hC / 9780295751962

$30.00s / £22.99 Pb / 9780295751979

$30.00s / £22.99 eb / 9780295751986

Science and Technology Studies / Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies feminist technosciences

Contributors Ryan Conrad, Mathew Gagné, Gary Kafer, Harris Kornstein, Shaka McGlotten, Stephen Molldrem, Susanna Paasonen, Nikita Shepard, Jenny Sundén, Suisui Wang, and Lina Žigelytė