January 29, 2025
12:00 pm EST
attend virtually: Livestream Link
How have technologies shaped the most intimate, personal, and vulnerable aspects of our lives? What impacts will they have on our bodies and relationships in the future as technologies continue to change and evolve? Join us for a panel presentation and roundtable discussion with three experts whose research focuses on exploring these questions!
Talk Titles
Dr. Bo Ruberg: “Sex Dolls and Swingers: How Media Technologies Make Sexual Subcultures”
Dr. Nathan Rambukkana: “Digital Intimacies: How Platforms Remake Close Connections That Matter”
Dr. Jamie Hakim: “Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis”
Presenter Bios
Dr. Bo Ruberg, a Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine where they also co-run the CATS (Critical Approaches to Technology and the Social) research lab. Dr. Ruberg is one of the founders and leading voices in the subfield of Queer Game Studies, and their research explores gender and sexuality in digital media and digital cultures. They are the author of Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022), The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (Duke University Press 2020), and Video Games Have Always Been Queer (New York University Press, 2019). Dr. Ruberg is also the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, the premier peer-reviewed journal in the field of media studies. They are also the co-editor of two edited volumes, Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023) and Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), as well as numerous journal special issues. Dr. Ruberg is the co-founder of the annual Queerness and Games Conference.
Dr. Nathan Rambukkana is an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo Canada. His work centres the study of discourse, politics, and identities, and his research addresses topics such as digital and platform intimacies, robotics and AI, hashtag publics, the “alt-right”, intimate privilege, and non/monogamy in the public sphere. He is the author of Fraught Intimacies: Non/Monogamy in the Public Sphere (UBC Press, 2015), and the editor of Hashtag Publics: The Power and Politics of Discursive Networks (Peter Lang, 2015) and Intersectional Automations: Robots, AI, Algorithms, and Equity (Lexington Books, 2021). His upcoming monograph Digital Intimacies: How Platforms Remake Close Connections that Matter is under contract with University of Toronto Press. Email: nrambukkana@wlu.ca Bluesky: @beeblefish.bsky.social
Dr. Jamie Hakim, a lecturer in culture, media, and creative industries at King’s College London. His research interests lie at the intersection of digital cultures, intimacy, embodiment, and care. He was the recipient of the Stuart Hall Foundation X Cultural Studies Award 2020. His book Work That Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2019, he co-authored The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence (Verso, 2020) as part of the Care Collective, and his co-authored book Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis was published by Bloomsbury in 2024, and will be the primary focus of his talk. Jamie is also on the editorial board for the Journal of Gender Studies and part of the Soundings editorial collective and the Care Collective.
