"This book traces the long arc of Black women's relationship with technology from the antebellum south to the social media era demonstrating how digital culture transforms and is transformed by Black feminist thought"--

Winner, Diamond Anniversary Book Award, awarded by the National Communication Association Winner, 2022 Nancy Baym Book Award, given by the Association of Internet Researchers Traces the longstanding relationship between technology and Black feminist thought Black women are at the forefront of some of this century’s most important discussions about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and influencer culture. But, Catherine Knight Steele argues that Black women’s relationship to technology began long before the advent of Twitter or Instagram. To truly “listen to Black women,” Steele points to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the United States and its ability to decenter white supremacy and patriarchy in a conversation about the future of technology. Using the virtual beauty shop as a metaphor, Digital Black Feminism walks readers through the technical skill, communicative expertise, and entrepreneurial acumen of Black women’s labor—born of survival strategies and economic necessity—both on and offline. Positioning Black women at the center of our discourse about the past, present, and future of technology, Steele offers a through-line from the writing of early twentieth-century Black women to the bloggers and social media mavens of the twenty-first century. She makes connections among the letters, news articles, and essays of Black feminist writers of the past and a digital archive of blog posts, tweets, and Instagram stories of some of the most well-known Black feminist writers of our time. Linking narratives and existing literature about Black women’s technology use in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century, Digital Black Feminism traverses the bounds between historical and archival analysis and empirical internet studies, forcing a reconciliation between fields and methods that are not always in conversation. As the work of Black feminist writers now reaches its widest audience online, Steele offers both hopefulness and caution on the implications of Black feminism becoming a digital product.

A treatise of Black women’s transformative influence in media and society, placing them front and center in a new chapter of mainstream resistance and political engagement In Reclaiming Our Space, social worker, activist, and cultural commentator Feminista Jones explores how Black women are changing culture, society, and the landscape of feminism by building digital communities and using social media as powerful platforms. As Jones reveals, some of the best-loved devices of our shared social media language are a result of Black women’s innovations, from well-known movement-building hashtags (#BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and #BlackGirlMagic) to the now ubiquitous use of threaded tweets as a marketing and storytelling tool. For some, these online dialogues provide an introduction to the work of Black feminist icons like Angela Davis, Barbara Smith, bell hooks, and the women of the Combahee River Collective. For others, this discourse provides a platform for continuing their feminist activism and scholarship in a new, interactive way. Complex conversations around race, class, and gender that have been happening behind the closed doors of academia for decades are now becoming part of the wider cultural vernacular—one pithy tweet at a time. With these important online conversations, not only are Black women influencing popular culture and creating sociopolitical movements; they are also galvanizing a new generation to learn and engage in Black feminist thought and theory, and inspiring change in communities around them. Hard-hitting, intelligent, incisive, yet bursting with humor and pop-culture savvy, Reclaiming Our Space is a survey of Black feminism’s past, present, and future, and it explains why intersectional movement building will save us all.

Based on interviews and archival research, this book explores how media is implicated in Black women’s lives in Britain. From accounts of twentieth-century activism and television representations, to experiences of YouTube and Twitter, Sobande's analysis traverses tensions between digital culture’s communal, counter-cultural and commercial qualities. Chapters 2 and 4 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

From “black girl magic” to Black Lives Matter, the second decade of the 21st century is defined by black feminist politics. Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump is a definitive investigation of the mainstreaming of black feminist politics in the 21st century. Following on the success of Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton and Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Obama, this volume incorporates the black women leaders of Black Lives Matter; contemporary black feminist political stars like Rep. Maxine Waters and Senator Kamala Harris; and the transformative influence of black feminist political strategy and principles in mainstream U.S. politics, especially in the 2016 U.S. election. The text also deepens earlier editions’ consideration of sexuality and gender identity in black feminist politics and explores the role of digital organizing and social media in setting the terms of contemporary political struggles. A must-read for scholars in Political Science, American Studies, Africana Studies, History, and Gender/Feminist/Women’s Studies, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump also breaks down the complexity of contemporary politics for an everyday reader eager to understand how black women have been defining leadership and politics since the mid-century.

"This book uses the Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr productions of Black women as evidence that negative ideas about Black women can be transformed. Misogynoir describes the uniquely co-constitutive racialized and sexist violence that befalls Black women"--

Black feminists remind us “that America’s destiny is inseparable from how it treats [black women] and the nation ignores this truth at its peril” (The New York Review of Books). Winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free.” —Combahee River Collective Statement The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today’s struggles. “A striking collection that should be immediately added to the Black feminist canon.” —Bitch Media “An essential book for any feminist library.” —Library Journal “As white feminism has gained an increasing amount of coverage, there are still questions as to how black and brown women’s needs are being addressed. This book, through a collection of interviews with prominent black feminists, provides some answers.” —The Independent “For feminists of all kinds, astute scholars, or anyone with a passion for social justice, How We Get Free is an invaluable work.” —Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal