Please see below the proposal announcement for Digital Media Ph.D. student Takeria Blunt.

Date: December 14, 2021

Time: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Location: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MDVjN2I1NWUtODgzNS00MjBhLTkxYzItMTE0YTFiZTU2NGQ1%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22482198bb-ae7b-4b25-8b7a-6d7f32faa083%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22672fb973-3707-492f-a6c1-2d5073180831%22%7d

Committee: Dr. Brian Magerko (co-advisor), Dr. Susana M. Morris (co-advisor), Dr. André Brock, Dr. Christopher Le Dantec, Dr. Tamara Pearson 

Title: Supporting Sensemaking and Self-Building in Black Women CS Students through Social Design-Based Experimentations of "Futuring"  

Description: 

Recent digital divide scholarship recognizes the limitations of traditional studies on access to computers and computer literacies and make the call for learning practitioners and researchers to shift from access and skills studies to instead prioritize research that embodies a sociocultural focus (Third Level). These works examine the "digital identity divide", relationships between computing and culture, and the design of viable learning spaces and pedagogies that center equity and social justice for marginalized students in STEM and particularly in computer science (CS) education. One such student group of concern in this sociocultural expansion is Black women STEM students, who frequently wrestle with an “outsider-within” status in all levels of academia and industry. This outsider status often renders Black women invisible, excluded, and/or tokenized in some spaces. This sort of divide in the identities that are available and acceptable for Black women pursuing STEM education is gaining traction, yet formal learning interventions are currently not reflective of recommendations from recent theoretical stances on identity and intersectionality in STEM education. Present literature also scarcely reveals the visions that Black women CS students have of future technologies and techno-futures, which I argue contributes to issues of invisibility and ostracization in the computing field.

My proposed work aims to address these gaps by blending emerging design-based research (DBR) approaches with Black feminist frameworks (i.e. Black feminist thought and Afrofuturist feminism) and Afrofuturist speculative design to develop and test CS learning interventions that: a) support computing identity development through design and invoking the “sociological imagination” in Black women CS students; b) center these students as producers of knowledge and technological artifacts and futures; and c) generate nuanced data about the lived experiences of Black women CS majors, particularly those learning computing at Historically Black Col- leges and Universities (HBCUs). I hold two primary arguments for this proposed work, which posit that: 1) Though it is important to increase access to computing and to support the growth of programming skills for marginalized students, it is equally important to give them space and place to interrogate the computing discipline and their own identities through enactments of Black feminist notions of "self-definition" through design; and 2) Engaging students in speculative design projects supported by understandings of how computational, political, professional identities may work together for these students will improve students' sense of belonging and empowerment within their computing majors. Overall, this endeavor takes part in reimagining what computer science education (CSE) looks like for these students. It is in this design-based reimagining where we find resources to support, empower, and critically engage Black women CS students during their journeys.